Students Built World's Fastest Electric Monowheel

A small group of students from the Duke University in North Carolina USA, have built the World’s Fastest Electric, Monowheel, called the EV360, specifically designed to exceed speeds of 70 mph, in preparation for setting a new Guinness World Record.

Now the team were all set to attempt the world record late 2020, they had approval from the Guinness World Record team to attempt it, and they only had to surpass the speed of 45 mph to beat it, but the virus lockdowns delayed the attempt.

But since the Monowheel is able to reach speeds of up to 72 mph, surpassing 45 mph for the world record, it will be all about the driver developing the skills to ride it that fast. As seen in the crash compilation, there is a lot more to it than riding fast in a straight line.

But since the bike is able to achieve the speeds necessary to beat the current record, it’s just a matter of time and practice to achieve it.

Thanks for watching.

► GENERAL INFO ABOUT THE EV360 MONOWHEEL

► Team Name: The Duke Monowheel Team
Core Team Members: Anuj Thakkar (Team Lead and Engineer), Carlo Lindner (Engineer), Ahmed Ahmed-Fouad (Engineer), Fran Romano (Lead Cinematographer), Jolán von Plutzner (Engineer, former)

► Vehicle Name: EV360
► Motor: 11kW (14.75 hp) continuous, 23 kW (31 hp) peak
► Battery: 72V 22Ah lithium polymer battery with 1.58 kWh capacity
► Range: 9 miles (14.5 km); (built for speed, not distance)
► Top speed: 70 mph (112 km/h); road tested at 31 mph (50 kmh) and soon to be improved


► SOME OTHER INTERESTING FACTS

During our test runs, we’ve crashed the vehicle 15 times already (see our gnarly crash footage). Luckily, we walked away from all these crashes unharmed, but the vehicle has needed plenty of repairs. This shows how unstable a monowheel is, especially when decelerating from higher speeds. Learning to ride a monowheel at higher speeds is a long, and often painful process. It’s nothing like riding a motorcycle and does not give the rider much control over the vehicle at all. Gentle inputs are key here: accelerating or decelerating too fast causes the frame to wildly rock back and forth. Similarly, trying to steer one way or another too quickly, or even just hitting a bump can cause the vehicle to start wobbling side to side, which is incredibly difficult to recover from. There is no quick and easy fix for this, other than hours upon hours of training.

You’ll often see us crashing while decelerating at the end of our runs, and usually around 15 to 20 mph (24 to 32 kmh). This is a deadly combination for two reasons:
1. While decelerating, the monowheel’s center of gravity shifts backwards behind the wheel’s point of contact to the road. If the vehicle starts wobbling during this phase, the braking force at the point of contact with the road and the momentum carrying the center of gravity straight forward creates a torque that further worsens this wobble.
2. At this specific speed, the wheel’s own rotational frequency harmonically oscillates with its wobbling frequency, which magnifies the effects of the wobble. A lot of other monowheels experience a similar phenomenon right around these speeds, so we were expecting to encounter issues during these speeds.

These two effects are quite difficult to overcome when they are compounded like that. But again, because these effects are inherent results of a monowheel’s one-wheeled design, the solution is more practice.

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[WonderWorldYTC]

★★★ *FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VIDEO / FACT UPDATES* ★★★

*1) At **6:07** what is that rolling on the ground behind the rider who fell off the monowheel?* - Serk commented "was the grip to the handle bar, he pulled it off as he fell" which you can clearly see that the left handlebar is missing a grip.

*2) Why don't they use fins for steering or stabilization* - No idea I am not an engineer, maybe it's difficult to fit to the frame, or maybe it would break the guidelines of the Monowheel World Record.

*3) Why did you restate the purpose of the Monowheel twice* - Based off reading lots of comments from other videos of unique design vehicles, I knew if I did not restate the purpose of THIS monowheel, people would be typing, useless invention, they don't work, why bother.
Things like that, it's not useless, it was built for one purpose.

[phillyspecial]

The driver should wear heelies(those old shoes i had in elementary school with wheels on the heels) to have better stability acting as training wheels

[arjenchristianhelder]

just a thought, a heavier wheel will self stabilize due to centrifugal forces, at high speed the effect gets better and staying stable should get easier.

[uruwow]

They should really talk to Mr Garrison about "IT"

[youtuuba]

I have ridden a pedal powered home-made monocycle that was built by a friend, based on photos and dimensions of the ones built for the Beijing Olympics. It felt pretty stable once I got the knack of getting it going, the trick was learning how to throw the body weight side to side to steer it, without overdoing the movement and causing instability. I never went very fast on that one, but people have been making motorcycle monowheels for a long time and riding them at pretty good speeds; I don't think they bothered to get measured to officially set any records, but they went at highway speeds. These students have a LOT to learn about what makes a good monowheel design and how to correctly ride them....and BTW, neither the one I rode nor the motorcycle-engine-powered ones I have seen had the rider with his legs down once the thing got going....they all had foot pegs, or pedals. I found that once I got the monowheel going, it was best to get my feet up away from the ground and concentrate on controlling the machine. As long as this team's riders have their feet in an unstabilized situation, the machine will be unstable. Their body needs to be more 'one' with the machine, too hard to do when the legs are flailing around.

[arihantbhattacharjee]

I think a way to stabilize the monowheel is by broadening the tyre so that it can balance easily.

[MikesFoggyIdea]

All the ones i'v seen had large tires, I would think that would help a lot with stabilization.

[johnmorrison]

Well done. It's good to see these young students have a go at something out of the ordinary. Keep up the good work.

[doxielain]

That looks like a good way to break an ankle. How about a tuned mass damper to null the oscillations?

[SpaceFrawg]

Huh, I guess all the other monowheel riders, including the one one going 61mph, with their feet on the pegs are doing it wrong... they forgot to check with this rider on the correct way to ride a monowheel.

[GiffysChannel]

I've gone 48mph on my Gotway Monster Pro. It's a high performance electric unicycle. If you look up that or the Veteran Sherman EUC, you'll see that you can get high performance and stabilization in a small package. I hope maybe they can integrate some of that tech into their Monowheel. I love this concept and I'm still holding out hope that there is a way to do this.

[tattooeddragon]

I love how engineering students with unlimited resources still can’t make a hundred year old invention work.

[WonderWorldYTC]

I love riding motorbikes, have been doing so since I was 17, and still have my latest bike I bought last year, but I highly doubt I would ride a Monowheel, way to unstable.

[stevenmarcato]

Mr Garrison's "IT" worked really well.

[timrodriguez]

I regularly do 45mph in traffic with my electric unicycle, and it is incredibly stable...lol Try an EUC!

[williamarturonewman]

Mr garrison maybe have some tips for them... Anyway great effort ❤️

[sageoz]

Okay here's an idea for cheap/easy lateral stability. Have the rider suspended on a secondary half ring attached by pivots at the very front and rear, like a sideways swing. Then take the guts and one of the drive wheels from a hoverboard and attach it to the bottom of the seat with the wheel perpendicular to the main wheel. It can then run side to side on a small arc attached to the wheel. So basically using the hoverboard sideways so that it will keep the rider's weight centered. This would be turned on just for starting and stopping and then when really moving turned off to allow the rider to shift and steer

[AMT]

@Wonder World-- thanks for the video! A response to the question we get quite a bit about heelies / wheels on your feet; we actually tried that early on, but an interesting result is that when you're bringing the monowheel up to speed in heelies, any kind of misalignment from parallel in your feet leads you to very very quickly split your legs into a painful split, or drive your feet into the vehicle itself; doesn't really provide much stability and makes riding FAR more difficult than just using pads with low friction coefficients with the asphalt on your boots. And it's immensely hard to keep your legs parallel to the vehicle.

After finishing the first version of the vehicle, honestly there's a LOT I would do differently. While the vehicle is definitely capable of hitting 70mph, as you can gather, I don't think it's "controllable" up to 70mph. A redesign would shift center of mass in the vehicle, likely have a smaller / carbon fiber frame, and a more robust drivetrain. The vehicle hits speed wobbles around 30-35mph (turns out that in conversations with them, the current record holders have faced this issue around the same speed as well) that was super difficult to break through-- and smaller monowheels might not experience the same issue.

While the team's split apart for awhile, I'm hoping to bring this back with a redesign soon!

[Jacey]

Why does the electric Unicycle work so good? It just has front to back stabilization. I ride them all the time.

[HeathenRides]

You need several wheel's inside of each other atleast 3 the outer makes it roll forward wheel inside of the outer should weigh the same and spinning the opposite direction 3times faster making you sit inside a planetary gear reduction working as a gyro and gas so when you lean forward by slowing down the gyro it increases the speed which makes it more stabile and friction must be eliminated the 3 or more wheel's inside each other should also be able to make themselves asymmetrical so they can work like a 3 Axis gyroscope kinda so when you lay down in a turn one of the wheel's will still spin in a straight upright position... you should make many in small toy version's and see the effects contra weight etc before making the prototype.. it's easier than making one mod at a time on the prototype.. even it's several wheel's it will look like one wheel.. should also install air brakes as stabilizers to help the gyroscope effect of the middle wheel which needs adjustable friction (the wheel that spins in the opposite direction of driving direction.which will make you stabile while braking.. the problem is that the monowheel ruin's your vision