This is one of the strangest vehicles we have ever seen in motion. This is an amazing gadget? electric wheels on four omnidirectional wheels, mounted sideways so it can self-balance like a Segway and move in any direction. It's called Screw Bike and it's one of those ideas that blows your mind.
Its creator is YouTuber British James Bruton, with a lot of experience with self-balancing and omnidirectional wheel technology, who had already built a self-balancing bicycle using a side-mounted omniwheel, in addition to several self-stabilizing robot projects. In fact, it's not even his first go at an omnidirectional motorcycle, as about seven months ago he released a video with one that turned… but couldn't move forward or backward.
And now comes the Screw Bike. Bruton changed the Omni wheels (with rollers mounted sideways) to Mecanum style wheels (at diagonal angles). Having four wheels like this, he can control the speed and direction of these wheels, move in any direction or spin happily on the spot.
Bruton built his own 14.2-inch diameter (360 mm) Mecanum wheels for the Screw Bike, 3D printing many of the components himself. And there is nothing like this on the market… and the closest things (of a much smaller size) are very expensive. These wheels are placed on their side, since their main function is to self-balance the chassis. They are moved by a rubber toothed belt, connected to an electric motor, so they can move forward or backward as desired.
Like a Segway, you can tilt it left or right to start movement in any direction… and from there, it goes forward, backward, sideways, rotating, diagonal… everything is possible with this arrangement. And how is it controlled? With a twist throttle it goes forward without canceling the self-balancing ability, a switch allows you to go backwards and a set of controls allows you to turn the bike on itself.
It is curious to see Bruton doing the first test indoors, trying not to break anything in his kitchen. He then goes to a parking lot to see the machine's capabilities as he spins and slides in all directions. It is not very fast, nor does it have suspensions… which makes it very remote that it could ever be manufactured, but it seems, to say the least, fun. Bruton has opened up the designs for the intrepid to build their own Screw Bike. The best thing, without a doubt, is to see it in action:
