Tightrope Walking Cheat Device
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2022
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It’s pretty hard to walk on a tightrope but I thought I’d have a go. I set up a bar which is a steel scaffold pole and tried my best to walk along it. Sometimes I could almost make it to the end, but most of the time I did far worse than that. It’s a bit easier if you crouch right down and use your arms to help you balance, but standing up tall makes it even harder. Standing still on the spot for any length of time is practically impossible.
But could I make a device that would help me balance?
I’ve built a couple of projects that used reaction wheels to make a device balance on the spot. This is a wheel which rotates and dynamically accelerates in either direction based on the angle of the device. Force equals mass times acceleration, so we only get a reaction force when the wheel is accelerating or changing direction.
But how big would a reaction wheel need to be to help me balance so I can walk all the way down the beam?
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Former toy designer, current CZcams maker and general robotics, electrical and mechanical engineer, I’m a fan of doing it yourself and innovation by trial and error. My channel is where I share some of my useful and not-so-useful inventions, designs and maker advice. Iron Man is my go-to cosplay, and 3D printing can solve most issues - broken bolts, missing parts, world hunger, you name it.
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No officer, I'm not drunk. See, I can walk in a straight line! *Proceeds to put massive spinning reaction wheel of doom on back*
☠️
"sir that's my gun belt"
The moment i had the same idea, your comment scrolls into my view.
Sometimes i think CZcams orders comments using mind telepathy!
@@TheRainHarvester
"Mind telepathy"
If that different than "penis telepathy"?
We need a follow-up to see if it helps when you get shit-faced
Your hips are like a hinge, which allows the device to think it's upright as long as only your upper body is upright. But if your legs are at a slight angle still, you're not balanced. You need the device to instead stabilize your hips, to keep your legs upright. Not your torso.
Yeah, like either attach the IMU to the legs, or use an RTK solution to keep the center of gravity above the rope/rod.
yeeees :D A tens EMS unit sending Electricity to legs so they are upright
or maybe put the sensor on the hips to get better tilt data?
like a tail? ;-)
@The Lone Creator stop advertising your shit on other people's channels and in unrelated discussions. it's poor form and very rude.
I have been welding all day and for some reason when you started welding I immediately shut my eyes for fear of damage, sleep deprivation is a hell of a drug
Never welded in my life but I did instinctively look away from the monitor when he started welding LMAO
throwin on the safety squints
Good instincts, though!
I watched this video for the second time and each time I squint and hide my eyes/close them, my brain just won't let me. look.
Go to bed instead of watching YT then!
I love your balancing machines! Suggestions for this one:
1) Ring of mass instead of spinning death flower. Reduce the mass for same moment of inertia. I would have tried a bike wheel with a vinyl 2" tube filled with wet sand, capped on each end and zip-tied in place of the tire. Respect for the max effort approach, but man that is a lot of cutting drilling welding screwing for the world's most deadly social-distancing encouragement device.
2) Accelerometer mounted on chest to decouple angle changes of the backpack relative to torso.
3) Ankle supporting work boots to help avoid breaking or spraining an ankle.
4) Control test with static mass on backpack instead of control test with no mass on back. I would guess it's even harder to balance with 30kg load on your back. So the improvement would be much larger than you seemed to observe.
Keep up the great work! You are inspiring!
I laughed out loud at “spinning death flower” hahaha
Real tight rope walkers hold onto a very long bar to balance. You should make a "virtual" long bar. It would be a short bar with reaction control wheels on either end of it to keep it perfectly level and then you hold onto that. When you feel you are tipping one way you would instinctively push or pull the opposite way and the reaction wheels would push or pull back hopefully keeping you upright and balanced.
Just a massy bar that shifts side to side should do it...
i like this idea a lot.. it would almost be like you have a rail to hold onto, only that it's only fixed in one of the 6 degrees of freedom. Would be an odd experience I think.
@@thewillderness7852 A longer bar of the same mass has a greater moment of inertia, and thus undergoes less rotational acceleration with the same moment/torque applied.
Cool idea.
One works just fine so lets make two and mount them at the ends of a pole to add weight, cost and complication to the job.
Says the reaction wheel salesman.
It's scary how close your elbows are getting to those massive steel bars!
"Billy Mays here, Do you love balancing but _hate_ your elbows? Burtoncorp has finally come up with a sollution ..."
had to stop watching coz of this so scary
I bet he cringed in pain watching this back in editing
@@Different_Name_ yup this is daft. It’s that and also just plain falling over and getting body parts in it. I assume the trigger was acting as a dead man switch but still. Absolutely batshit IMO.
Yeah, put some elbow pads on, James!
I think that with the amount of practice you put into balancing with your compensator you would likely be able to cross the bar without a huge contraption on your back. Good fun watching the build. 😁
Good point! When I was around 16, a friend and I would walk up to a store regularly. On the way there was a metal railing fence about 15’ long. One day we got the idea to try and walk on it (was about 3 1/2’ high if I recall) and each of lasted only a few steps. We tried some more…then went on.
But after that whenever we walked up to that store we would give it a try, maybe a few times. Was decades ago, but I recall in about a month of this, we were regularly able to walk the whole length about 50% of the time, and even when we didn’t we got pretty far usually before falling off.
Someone doesn't understand engineering. Why would you spend 5 minutes fixing a problem when you can spend days solving it?
lol that was my thought obviously in jest but itd be like a dude designing robotic legs to run a mile faster 😂
And this is why tightrope walkers have a really long bar. I think it would be much better with a weight on the end of a bar swinging side to side like a pendulum. If it could extend as it pivoted then that weight can be smaller because the lever will be longer, I hope you revisit this.
This is why the comments are so important. As I too was wondering if what you suggested was a possibility.
There is something very scary about putting 1500w of motorized rotational momentum directly in to your spine.
You misspelled awesome.
Worst case have a button that needs held to operate, when you begin to fall you'll inevitably let go and E stop the motor
This is how we get a real life Doc Oc.
@The Lone Creator Cool. I understand the grind but maybe commenting like this isn’t best for public opinion
with sharp steel spinning 1 foot away
As a physiotherapist, this is very interesting to watch. Your body´s ability to maintain balance is highly dependant on accurate feed-back and feed-forward information, but also the coordination between these two types of information. I guess the same principles can be applied to the device on your back. You basically have two systems trying to do the same task... But without knowing how to work together.
Could this type of device be helpful for any of your patients? Also saw someone suggested a waist height version
@@Idekbru the problem is this works with mass, and patients who are struggling to walk will also struggle to walk with 30+kg on their back
I was thinking this as well, it would be very confusing having both a reaction wheel and your natural reaction against falling. Maybe if it were manually hand controlled, although it would take a lot of training and practice to be able to correct yourself by hand
As psychotherapist, i am very interested too!
@@xXChipsAndGravyXx 😂😂😂
The technique you described where you "push" off either side to balance while you walk is great. It reminds me of paddling a very tippy kayak.
when i saw the steel pipe you balanced across, i thought you made a mechanism to roll the pipe back and forth to help with balancing, that would be really interesting
"Now I can safely walk the tightrope"
Halfway, the tightrope breaks under the immense weight.
A ring of mass would be much more effective than radial spokes of death. The radius of gyration of a ring is pretty much R, while the radius of gyration of a bar placed from the rotating axis to the outer radius is R*(1/sqrt(3)). That means for a given diameter and weight, you are only getting 58% of the rotational inertia you could be getting. Put another way, you could probably reduce the weight from 30kg to 20kg with the same inertia by using a ring design.
They weren't from the rotating axis though, they started most of the way out so not really "spokes", I imagine the radius of gyration wasn't far off of the radius of that wooden wheel with that setup
You are absolutely right. I can't belive he didn't design the mass placement this way
Thanks for this comment
@@stenzenneznets It's fairly easy to see how he wound up with those long spokes:
James is well aware that ring mass distribution is better as demonstrated by his previous 3D printed flywheel designs - they aren't perfect but definitely move the mass outwards
This is the first time he's been moving this much mass around with a reaction wheel, so his initial guess at the required performance was low
Using his initial guess, he built a flywheel with the mass more or less towards the outside, within the limits of a project he needs to build, record and edit in less than a week with room to spare
When that wasn't enough he added steel bar stock to the outside of the wheel
When that still wasn't enough he decided the wheel diameter was too narrow so the next load of weight he added also extended the radius, and then a bit more on the outside
Basically every time he's added weight he's put the new weight as far out as easily possible, he's just been stuck with the existing limits of the design without modifying the already complete parts. I expect if he did a v2 that it would be a larger diameter ring with better mass distribution from the get go. This is just an inevitable consequence of seeing projects like these - since it's just effectively a hobbyist proof of concept you will inevitably see far from optimised designs even from engineers who very much know all the ways the design is suboptimal.
@The Lone Creator super lame, I hope everyone reports your trash for spam
I've really been enjoying all of the larger-scale projects with the other workshop. Nice change of pace!
I have 2 suggestions.
1- Instead of extending the force arm, you can reduce the size of the disc in half and increase its weight.
2- You can use 2 separate motors and balancers. When you want to turn in the opposite direction, you cut off the power of the first motor and start rotating the second motor, that is the disk.
I'm watching with pleasure. Good work
Just a little feedback from a physiotherapist on this cool project:
Maybe Put the wheel down at rear center waist level near the body's COG,and shrink it's size and weight by increasing RPM?
It looks like many of the failures to stay on the bar, specially the earlier tries, occur when James instinctively tries to absorb the pushing force by moving his shoulders and hips in opposite directions and thus shifting his center of mass.
If you try to visualize the imaginary people standing on either side pushing him back, I'm pretty sure they would find that pushing his hips is more effective than pushing his shoulders in keeping him balanced.
So I definitely agree that this would probably work much better with the reaction wheel at or slightly above waist level.
@@iwanwesterduin It would also be more practical for someone to nudge him in the hips or ribs, compared to the shoulders, if the bar is more than 15 cm off the ground. So that would probably seem more "normal" if he's perceiving this as "helpers pushing him back up".
Increasing rpm brings the issue of acceleration time. In order to gain the appropriate effect you'd need a motor that could reliably bring the reaction wheel up to top speed in a short time. And he already seems to be using a pretty powerful motor, with a 2:1 reduction as well for extra speed.
I know you usually want a reaction wheel like that higher on the balancing object, but as you mentioned our body isn't rigid so we compensate for a lot of that.
So, wouldn't having it closer to waist line maybe better?
It would be closer to where our center of mass usually is, and where you would want the most to have those forces helping you balance, no?
Also, maybe having something like a cage from a paramotor would be a bit safer. XD
Would also allow you to make the wheel wider like you mentioned
@The Lone Creator Not cool dude.....
@The Lone Creator Parasite... 🤨
Was just going to mention the same thing. Your body is essentially a double pendulum, so any applied torque needs to be on the first pendulum or it will be absorbed by the unconstrained second.
As a biomechanical engineer I agree 100% with this, other than the center of mass part if you place the reaction closer to the chest your abdomen muscles would work a lot harder to compensate the external forces, making you fatigue faster, it would work better as a balancing exercise rather than a helping hand.
I just found your excellent channel!
Having practiced and thought about balancing (myself, using myself, with varied and escalating challenges, tools to assist and give feedback) a lot, I LOVE and am inspired by this idea (and it gives me some new ones)!
A couple thoughts that might be helpful:
1. As you said, our squishy, twitchy, uncalibrated, non-rigid bodies tend to react somewhat chaotically w/re: handling sudden, unexpected changes in acceleration..well, to do what gymnasts do, these things are controlled with strong, simple body postures and muscular tension..effectively reducing the number of moving parts while increasing robustness of postural integrity..which simplifies force handling.
In your case, consider these tips:
- Hips tucked
- Tight core
- Squeeze glutes
- Knees slightly bent
- Arms straight
- Head neutral
If you spend a little bit of time practicing this posture..going over the points of focus repeatedly, trying to strengthen each one and your ability to maintain them all..I think you'll find that it makes your body more straightforwardly compatible with your device.
2. Rather than making your weights heavier or the arms longer, what about maximizing weight distribution toward the ends of the arms?
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Great stuff - subbed! ,{^_^}"
Watching your videos just made me make a huge improvement to my FPV gimbal designs, love the videos and thank you for the inspiration sir
If you were to make a steel ring to be the reaction mass it would not only have a lot more inertia than the spokes you currently have, it would also be a lot less likely to smack into your elbows
The US missile designers (and later space rocket builders) needed to use rotary gyros for attitude control long before cheap electronic IMUs were available. Since mass and volume were at a premium they built the rotating frames from lightweight beryllium alloy and added mass on the rims with very dense tungsten alloy cylinders. Wikipedia has an informative article on the ST-124-M3 inertial platform flown on the Saturn V rocket from the 1960s onwards.
My suggestion for a Mk 2 balancing rig would be to lighten the non-rotating parts by replacing the box steel frame with aluminium extrusions and replace the reaction wheel with aluminium spokes or perhaps even a bicycle wheel driven by a pulley belt, then attach lead weights around the at the end of the spokes (or around the rim).
Maybe it's cool for crossing a beam, but imagine this for a person who is trying to walk again after an injury (or paralysis)-they may be strong enough to bear the load of the reaction wheel, but lack the fine motor control to do it.
I've seen a lot of completely pointless inventions, but this one definitely crosses the line !
Awesome !!!
Ty Lee would go crazy with this one
Next step : Slackline !
hang the mechanism under the slackline to control the slackline and not the person. Beware of falls.
I would recommend a linear mass, instead of a wheel:
In a rigit robot, the wheel applies a rotational momentum, which directly transfers (by friction to the ground) as a lateral force compensating the fall. In a soft body like a human body, most of the rotational momentum just transfers as bending force on your spin, which is mostly absrobed by it and the legs, putting very little lateral force on your feets.
If self-balancing is produced by an horizontal linear actuator (imagine a heavy horizontal bar, that the motor is moving left or right). I believe this would much better transfer as a help to keep balance for your upper-body. Obviously, it can't keep moving left/right indefinitively, so the software must overshot slightly to then recover the center of the axis.
You can test this manually, by handling the horizontal heavy bar yourself with two hands. You will notice how easier is to keep the balance with the help of the bar.
A linear mass on a single axis would still apply a significant torque to your hips so would have a similar problem but also be far more cumbersome. IMHO 2 key things would make this work far better - a more optimised flywheel as mentioned by others and just a bit of practice, letting his brain get a feel for walking with the wheel on. Admittedly practice would also make him better at walking a tightrope without a flywheel, but it would likely take *a lot* less practice to get good with a flywheel than to walk a tightrope without one.
Isn't that what tightrope walkers do with a long balance pole?
@@1944GPW Yes, but using a flexible pole that hangs below them to lower their COG as much as possible. James doesn't have the space for such a setup. In that case the walker is also the one in control, having it computer controlled would be much trickier to learn to walk with I imagine
Intersting concept. I personally think a tail like pendulum with reaction wheel like properties may be more effective as it would keep the mass down low and make balancing easier
SPOTTED THE FURRY
@@big_bird8597زهف خفي غفهث
@@big_bird8597but it might work better
I had several concepts for this a couple decades ago when my dad first started having problems with equilibrium but was still plenty strong.
I thought maybe we can keep people upright as long as they keep being able to overcome gravity but not balance.
Wouldn't a gyroscope based balance system be better? You can compensate for lower mass by spinning it faster. Also mount it lower, closer to your center of mass. Great video.
Also, one in front and one behind to compensate for the torsion that must be generating.
Came here to write the same thing, but knew already someone though about it so kudos to you my friend. :)
Less mass more speed.
i doubt this would work. two gyroscopes spinning in opposite directions would cancel the torsion, but also cancel the gyroscopic effect. the smart way to do it is to have a gyroscope ring around the waist. but be careful because you might end up gyroscopically precessing on the middle of your tight rope.
I think it would be really cool to see a wearable robotic tail that mimics how other animals use theirs to help keep you balanced. I've seen a few designs but most of the ones I've seen are closed source prototypes, and I'd love to see how you'd approach it. I personally would find that rather useful as I have horrible balance 🤣
make it plug-in type too to commercialize it ;)
@@treasure8213 you look like the type of fella to be into that
Want tail!
Humans don't need a tail. We gave it up for a phat a$$ that does the same thing.
No, really, we have big butt so that running is easier.
The issue is lack of feedback to the brain from the tail. Tails work because of the way the brain views things attached to its spinal column.
My mom broke her tailbone, and it healed crooked. As a result, she stands and walks crooked because her coccyx healed crooked, and her brain is trying to orient herself according to the angle her coccyx healed in
I know I’m late and people probably already told you, but when tig welding you should keep the gun on the weld after you stop the current, the gas will flow for a few seconds as the weld cools and no air will get into your freshly laid bead. 👍
love how he actually welds and not the start stop stuff of other videos
Rather than the box steel and steel bars that look a bit like saw teeth, you could use a steel ring around the edge of the wheel (like the rim of a bike tire) to add mass to it and it might be a bit safer. It would also mean most of the mass would be further from the point of rotation of the wheel.
I can only imagine that custom machining a steel ring would have costed a pretty penny, or required some sort of spoke system that would have just created the same issue.
@@adissentingopinion848 You could probably still use the wooden circle. But rather than mounting the steel bars radiating outward from the center, create a multi segmented ring along the outer rim of the wooden circle.
@@adissentingopinion848 You could, however, bend steel into a ring instead of machining it, or weld it from segments
Use a cast lead ring.
@@adissentingopinion848 it doesnt have to be perfectly circular. he could have made it with the steel bars hes already using just by cutting them at an angle and welding them end to end to make a big dodecahedron or something
I am loving your projects branching into more wood and metal working. It opens up so many doors for you going forward. Great work james!
this is a very interesting use of this property and i never seen it or the other ones shown implemented in this way! great idea sir!
Quite the opposite to your bigger, heavier flywheel proposal, you need a high torque step motor with a smaller, metal flywheel. This will give you the more immediate assistance you need. A motor with enough torque will work without a flywheel, as they deliver quite the jolt, but a metal flywheel is more compact, enabling a mre rapid change of direction response, and will definitely smooth out the effect.
You know I can appreciate the sketchiness of this project, nice job!
I feel like filling the box steel up with sand or metal beads would have been a good way to add more weight.
Could I add a bunch of 18650s for power and weight.
Perhaps put something a bit safer like a ring of cast metal like an actual flywheel.
@@jtjames79 some depleted uranium should be pretty heavy
Thanks for the code I will try to build something similar to this to stabilise my home in rough sea.
These smart engineers coding up PIDs and using centripetal force to counter act rotation when all that’s really required is a wider bridge. 😂
Seriously though, loved the video. Fantastically creative and entertaining. Thanks for sharing!
It would be interesting to see how this does compared to a simple balance compensation pendulum. You could get that by simply removing all the weights on half the reaction wheel. Let the weight sink to the bottom and then program the controller to swing the weight from side to side to keep your balance.
That would also be a lot less dangerous, if it worked, but I suspect it would saturate really easily because of the restricted range of motion.
@@mal2ksc Well, think about it. It is the same as shifting the weight of a balance rod from side to side of a traditional walker. The only problem is if you start to fall faster than the correction can match the rate of increase of angular momentum. But, if it is tracking that all along the way, that should not happen.
i don't think that's safe, you change a spinning wheel that's really dangerous, with a hammer that swings in the back.
and it need more force to move a big mass needed to compensate the force and gravity of a single heavy object.
i don't know how hard it's to make something like that accurate enought, but sure it's a interesting idea.
That's a frightening amount of energy very close to your elbows!
Good to see all the safety gear at work during the build though, something that is often missing from CZcams content.
Tilt your head back too far and you're going have a bad problem (and will not balance on a bar today).
this device will save lives one day. Please keep building.
Absolutely agree.
Gotta attach it to the bottom part of the body for real effectiveness though.
This is actually amazing
" i dont need skill, I need SCIENCE"
I'm sure these have great effect, but I'm curious to see how your abilities on the bar improved after walking it a number of times improved compared to how the machine was assisting.
Great work James as always
Unicycle! ... I imagine using that gain trigger would allow you to use less and less reaction wheel as you become more accomplished. Once again, very cool! Thanks for sharing!
This is brilliant! My Dad could have done with something like this in his later years as he was getting unsteady on his feet due to vascular dementia. Perhaps instead of scaling up the wheel and mass, you could increase the acceleration instead, and as other people have said, move it lower down to avoid the "squishiness" of your core.
And you really think He (ur dad) will be comfortable with all the weight of this device?
@@MichelAngeCalderon That's why I suggested not scaling up the mass but focussing on increasing the acceleration. He was a pretty strong old bloke when his balance started going.
Now this is an interesting idea! I’m looking forward to any improvements on this reaction wheel balancer lol
If looking for ideas for an updated version: Perhaps a ring of mass would be safer to rotate than the current box tubes, maybe moving the reaction wheel toward the hips would allow for better transfer through center of mass and increase accuracy as the leg angles and torso angles are different for balance
Nice work! Enjoyed that a lot, thank you.
Thank You James for Onshape its briliant platform!!! ThankYou!
a lesser ratio and larger speeds would accomplish the exact same thing as more mass.
Reducing the gear ratio to increase the reaction wheel's top speed also reduces how quickly the reaction wheel can accelerate. It looks like James struck a pretty good compromise between acceleration and top speed, but it's hard to tell just by watching.
@@liambohl but the reduced mass increases acceleration so they cancel out just now with less gearing and less overall mass but the same effect on his body.
Nice thing about working night shift is there is usually a new episode about the time I get home.
The momentum is made by the X-distance between the tube and the centre of the body mass. While the current device detects the angle of Z axis of the body. So the device won't help when the body is falling strait. Also, it will push the balanced body when it is tangled. Even more, when the body is just started falling and is tangled in a different side, the device will help to fall faster.
Hi James, I think adding a cvt will add nice benefit to reach higher speeds to create that force for longer
Get rid of the box steel near the center of rotation. Put all the weight on the outside of the circle. The pack will weigh less and have more power to balance you.
Now it's time to test it in space
You should've given an example of you walking without it at the end. The human brain is very good at picking up things like this, and this is a relatively easy task to do without any machine intervention given a bit of practice.
you made my day :)
like futurama, where the professor explains his new engine is moving the universe, but not the spaceship.
Looks like a massive quality of life improvement for walking while drunk enthusiasts!
You want drunk people with high speed wheels of spinning steel chunks stumbling around the street...?
Your projects are always amazing. I was surprised you didn’t try the traditional long stick to use as a reaction mass, to get a feel for how well that worked and how well you could balance with it. I suspect it works extremely well and might make you wonder why you would even bother making an automated version of it. Then again, why not use a long stick rather than a bunch of small weights on your device? Of course the stick is limited in how much total motion it can go through before it hits the ground, but since angular momentum is conserved, it technically should never go beyond a certain limited range of swing, right?
As time goes on you’re gaining more experience so you are probably getting better even without a reaction device.
Not sure why you didn't think of this, but rotate the the wheel 90 degrees, push it away from your back so it doesn't saw you in half, and spin it about twice as fast. Tada, gyroscope. You could probably rollerblade across that pipe then.
That actually looked like quite the improvement. Nice work
That looks like a device from Mad Max
no officer i am not drunk - I can walk perfect straight line ( puts on gyroscope backpack)
With this much of effort and trials, I think your body has also learnt to walk balanced without any aid.
Defo one of the most mad scientist projects you've done... can imagine this demo being a hit at events if H&S allow!!
Similar idea, something that help you doing back flip.
What
such a creative idea - a bit scary but super creative . Thanks for sharing.
I have literally thought about this idea sense childhood. thank you for showing me what it looks like in the real world!!!
what an awesome project!!
This would work so much better if the reaction wheel had better leverage, its current centre of rotation is a long way from your body’s pivot point which reduces its leverage on the rotation of your body. That’s why reaction wheels in spacecraft are at the centre of mass.
I’d try getting it closer to hip level. That should give you a lot more responsiveness and torque.
This looks like something out of death stranding! So cool!
I started this video thinking "hey that's a pretty neat idea, why haven't anyone made such a device before"
But ending this video being glad you still have intact elbow plats and amazed at how the human body works but also how dump this device looks and is.
But definitely a great science project and learning experience, with some safety modifications it could even be a neat try at a theme park ride
"I'm so good at walking on a tightrope that I can do it with this giant machine on my back 😎"
Great Video. Glad you stepped away from 1 wheeled robots for a bit. My favorite line: "But yea, I started to add some more steel to that"...
"I need a bigger wheel with less mass" - you're basically describing a tightrope walker's pole.
When it comes to the tight rope your intuition is usually wrong. most people will try get both feet set down and then try to balance, but that's gonna mess you up more often than not. You wanna regain your balance while one foot is in the air. use it to your advantage.
that was actually brilliant!
James, I love the videos! It occurs to me you could make it more efficient by having the same amount of weight, but having it all as far out on the ring as possible. Perhaps a solid steel hoop.
"basically it's not too unnatural.." says the guy with a giant spinning backpack and variable speed control!
Love your work. Always interesting and educational!
Super cool!
Would be cool to see you try out more designs and have a longer beam to test on. Would having more wheels spinning help with reducing the mass?
PS: I'd love to see a version 2 of this compared to a long balancing pole by you. Got a feeling you just might get better at balancing ;)
If you try a version 2 of this, put the reaction wheel basically on your butt. Sounds weird, but above your torso isn't really needed for slack line balancing. It can help for sure, but it also just ads another layer of complexity to the mix. I've done circus arts for over 20 years, and most slack liners I know can walk with no upper body help. As long as your feet are placed well, then it just comes down to keeping the legs and hips properly aligned, which the reaction wheel should do if mounted right.
They way he walks on the bar at the end looks like a boston dynamis robot walking lol. Good job on the build ❤
Incredible engineering. If the motor was powerful enough, the impulse, or jerk from the flywheel spinning up could mean that less weight would be necessary. Great idea for diving suits.
If that motor had more torque that would be neat.
Would allow a diver to maintain balance especially against tidal forces.
A man walked across two buildings
James: walking in a straight pipe is impossible
As an alternative design option that would allow for more power for lighter weight / weaker motor input:
Imagine to counter-rotating flywheels which you spin up to speed slowly before even starting. You siphon energy off of them by applying a break to slow them down this is the instantaneous 'jolt' you're looking for to push yourself in the opposite direction (ideally it's a weak break or a very brief one, so you only take a portion of their energy). A smaller motor can continually rev them back up to speed - this will take a longer time than the breaking so it won't apply as much of an off-balancing force during the rev up part of the process.
Two wheels so you can break one or the other based on which direction you need to tilt towards.
The only thing I'll note is that a design like this starts to pose a safety hazard if your fly wheels are holding enough energy, it'd be more applicable for some of those robot designs than as a wearable device for humans.
Very cool to watch. It seems like when the wheel changes its direction, it somehow push you out of your way. I would suggest to use two wheels, one spinning clockwise, and the other anti-clockwise, at the same time. In doing so, you will have a much more quick response to maintain the equilibrium. (Adjust the angular velocities in such way that the total angular momentum can change quicker).
the reaction wheel works on acceleration, not speed. it is instantly providing torque regardless of if the direction changed yet
It's the mass alone that is helping you get across, if you truly could not do it by yourself. Adding mass will always help in balancing, since it takes more to move you off the beam/pole.
“Caught beneath the wheel of progress!”
This is really neat! I just happen to see Junkrat when I see this in your back :0
its functional and compact as well, which is nice.
@jamesBruton, I think gyroscopic force is perpendicular to its rotation. So you should try making something like a spinning top for your body, maybe place a massive rotating disk over your head that will keep y from falling while it's rotating or a disk on your back that is perpendicular to what you have already made.
i think tightropes are ropes (aka flexible) so that you can shift the rope itself in order to push your body back toward the center of gravity. In other words, its much harder to balance on a stiff beam than a rope. When you move your feet to the left/right you have a better angle to push against in order to move your body back to the center line. I'm not sure if it makes sense or how to explain it in words
only at about 10mis in, but my initial though would be that by adding more weight you are engaging your core a lot more, therefore allowing you to "balance better" by default. Love the video btw. just my 2c.
"larger reaction wheel with less mass"
I feel like we're incrementally evolving towards the old balancing pole...
This is like some insane steampunk weapon. Imagine tackling someone while wearing that while it's spinning.
The issue is your sense of balance, and balance is more than inner ear / brain signal chemistry but also hand-eye coordination, muscle strength and conditioning. Especially for your legs and back. Since you are missing that you are essentially addressing the wrong flaw.
I read down through the comments and didn't see anyone suggest this, but maybe a cheap and easy balanced weight would be a couple car brake rotors. They're usually pretty heavy, especially a couple of them, they're compact, and wouldn't be that hard to adapt the current system to use them.