“This is amazing, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever built!” exclaimed YouTube inventor James Bruton as he churned around a car park atop his freshly-finished self-balancing four-wheel-screw-drive electric motorcycle. The 3D-printed roller bearing and plywood wheels and blunt-nosed shape don’t exactly inspire visions of high-speed corner carving rides, but there’s a certain retro-futuristic view of the world going on that I seriously appreciate. This bike isn’t built to lay down fast lap times, but it can do a lot of interesting things that a normal motorcycle just can’t. It’s a new level of nimble.
Have you ever been riding a traditional rubber-tire motorcycle and wished you could easily scoot two feet to the left without needing to dismount? Or have you wanted to rotate your whole bike ninety degrees to fit through a tight gap? What if you forgot your favorite scarf at home and you needed to quickly turn back the way you came, but your turning circle is too big for the alley you’ve ridden down? There’s gotta be a better way! This screw-bike solves all of those common problems.
I’ve never seen a motorcycle (or anything else for that matter) with mecanum wheels before. Self-balancing motorcycles have been around for ages, and are hardly anything new, but these wheels are a game changer, and allow the bike to act like a big longitudinal Segway. Put Paul Blart in a leather jacket with a one percenter patch, and you’ve kind of got the right idea. It’s weird and innovative, and I love it.
The whole project is open source on Github, so if you want to build your own, you absolutely could. I’m not sure I have the technical skills to make it happen, but riding one of these around would be pretty fun for a little while.