Loopwheels: A vibration-reducing wheel with integral suspension(loopwheels.com)
loopwheels.com
Loopwheels: A vibration-reducing wheel with integral suspension
https://www.loopwheels.com/
58 comments
How much does it increase friction and would this be feasible on other vehicles as well? Once electric cars are eventually here, their wheels will be the primary noise emitters.
But that is something you should not get rid of in electric cars anyway. They emit already much less noise than regular cars and are thus harder to hear by pedestrians. You don't really want super silent 1ton metal blobs moving around at 30++km/h as far as I know
At 30 km/h, the car's sensors will make it stop near instant in case this is required. There is no need for insisting on noise pollution.
Awareness of what's around you is greatly aided by a bit of noise. Given the early failures of self driving cars and what we know about mechanical reliability of normal ones, I don't think I want to pin my life or the life of my children on some automatic stop that might not work. Better to be able to get out of the way sooner.
As always, it is a trade-off.
Our joint use of the public streets is based on a certain trust that drivers will not try to plow into people. That doesn't mean you have to recklessly abandon all precaution, but it does mean that there are always going to be edge cases that are unmitigated. I think the vehicle based terror attacks have sadly illustrated that point.
Walking the streets in a defensive mode that assumes low speed sneaking up by a driver intent to kill, or being completely oblivious to the surrounding, while at the same time driving a vehicle with defects in its core functions feels like an edge-case. The near ubiquity of people walking or cycling with headphones, or fully being fully engaged with their mobile phones seems to support that.
Cars are dangerous and operated without proper care for sure, but there are very, very few injuries from ultra low speed collisions with cars.
On the other hand there is enormous evidence of serious stress caused by traffic noise having an impact on health.
The whole 'car noise' thing was lobbied by car-makers hoping to cash in on a 'custom ringtones for cars', modeled after the mobile phone market of the 90's. Do you believe that these random noises will avoid more deads and injuries than those created by the resulting stress and 'postal' incidents by those having to involuntarily suffer this?
There are better options. Have slow moving cars emit a low powered radio or radar signal instead. Very compact and extremely low cost detectors and emitters already exist for those. Those that wish get a proximity warning without harming innocents, and as a added bonus this also works for people with reduced hearing, either because the have a hearing problem, or because they are wearing headphones.
The only ones that would suffer a tiny bit are the car makers missing out on selling sounds. Can't say I'm very sympathetic to that crowd as they have amply shown a lack of responsibility and care for people's health and well-being . As usual, the benefits they want to pocket are once more blatantly oblivious to the societal downsides as they have been fully externalized for them.
Our joint use of the public streets is based on a certain trust that drivers will not try to plow into people. That doesn't mean you have to recklessly abandon all precaution, but it does mean that there are always going to be edge cases that are unmitigated. I think the vehicle based terror attacks have sadly illustrated that point.
Walking the streets in a defensive mode that assumes low speed sneaking up by a driver intent to kill, or being completely oblivious to the surrounding, while at the same time driving a vehicle with defects in its core functions feels like an edge-case. The near ubiquity of people walking or cycling with headphones, or fully being fully engaged with their mobile phones seems to support that.
Cars are dangerous and operated without proper care for sure, but there are very, very few injuries from ultra low speed collisions with cars.
On the other hand there is enormous evidence of serious stress caused by traffic noise having an impact on health.
The whole 'car noise' thing was lobbied by car-makers hoping to cash in on a 'custom ringtones for cars', modeled after the mobile phone market of the 90's. Do you believe that these random noises will avoid more deads and injuries than those created by the resulting stress and 'postal' incidents by those having to involuntarily suffer this?
There are better options. Have slow moving cars emit a low powered radio or radar signal instead. Very compact and extremely low cost detectors and emitters already exist for those. Those that wish get a proximity warning without harming innocents, and as a added bonus this also works for people with reduced hearing, either because the have a hearing problem, or because they are wearing headphones.
The only ones that would suffer a tiny bit are the car makers missing out on selling sounds. Can't say I'm very sympathetic to that crowd as they have amply shown a lack of responsibility and care for people's health and well-being . As usual, the benefits they want to pocket are once more blatantly oblivious to the societal downsides as they have been fully externalized for them.
> car-makers hoping to cash in on a 'custom ringtones for cars', modeled after the mobile phone market of the 90's
This is singularly the worst idea I have ever heard in my life
This is singularly the worst idea I have ever heard in my life
I really think I do. The traffic noise in cities makes conversation impossible almost everywhere outside (I'm hard of hearing); meanwhile public places inside that would otherwise be quiet enough get filled with music. Yes, making quiet cars safe is a challenge, but why not try solving it before assuming a bug is a feature?
Just put a speaker on every car playing Canon in D.
Yep, a Prius running slowly on battery power is silent enough that people tend to just walk right in front of you since they can't hear it coming...but also makes it easy to sneak up on someone and hit them with the horn for some entertainment value, gotten quite a few friends (and jaywalkers) like that.
I was talking with a blind guy a while back about the beeping crosswalk things and he was saying he had to quit walking to the corner store because the intersection didn't beep and he almost got run over too many times since he had a hard time figuring out which direction he was able to walk by listening to the car noises alone which near silent cars would only exacerbate. Probably be easier to make all the crosswalks beep instead of forcing cars to make unnecessary noise pollution but until that time...
I was talking with a blind guy a while back about the beeping crosswalk things and he was saying he had to quit walking to the corner store because the intersection didn't beep and he almost got run over too many times since he had a hard time figuring out which direction he was able to walk by listening to the car noises alone which near silent cars would only exacerbate. Probably be easier to make all the crosswalks beep instead of forcing cars to make unnecessary noise pollution but until that time...
By looking at the animation, it appears the contact patch with the ground isn't changing. Just the same as a normal wheel then.
What's changing is the internal structure and suspension.
What's changing is the internal structure and suspension.
The bending itself involves internal friction. If it didn't, you'd oscillate forever after hitting a bump.
I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I would be surprised if it were as efficient as a normal wheel when on flat ground. The vibration study page states they will publish numbers on the rolling efficiency of the wheel 'soon'.
I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I would be surprised if it were as efficient as a normal wheel when on flat ground. The vibration study page states they will publish numbers on the rolling efficiency of the wheel 'soon'.
Friction and noise aside, it's better to have the suspension built into the frame rather than the wheels. Added weight in the wheels adds to rotational inertia, which is harder to overcome than linear inertia. A rough rule of thumb is one kilogram in the wheels is worth two in the frame for a car in terms of acceleration.
Tire noise, mainly produced by the vibration of the tire wall, becomes the prime component in the noise production of 'regular' combustion fueled vehicles as well when you go >35km/h. In terms of noise, an electric versus a combustion car doesn't make much of a difference outside very low and in practice almost never driven speeds.
When we are talking noise terrorists with car mods added specifically to pollute the audiosphere, that is different ofc.
When we are talking noise terrorists with car mods added specifically to pollute the audiosphere, that is different ofc.
Residential streets are mostly limited to 30 km/h here and even the largest inner-city streets have a limit of 50 km/h which is rarely reached due to traffic jams, traffic lights etc.
You mean motorcycles? I cannot understand how any stock motorcycle can be as loud as a completely modded car and be street legal to the detriment of everyone else.
It is fairly easy to make modern engines, even when housed on motorcycles, and most certainly when mounted in cars, relatively quiet.
A lot if not most of the modern car's engine noise is now made deliberately. Special noise chambers are added to amplify and shape the sound, acoustic isolation is foregone in design, and even in some cases engine noises are actually produced by speakers mounted on the vehicle.
because "safety"
You mean in the 'loud pipes save lives" sense? That is just the same as saying "When I go for a drink, I'll first poison everyone in the bar to reduce the chance of someone attacking me"
I'd be interested to learn how much additional energy is required, presumably that's the trade off.
Good tech and great looks! Want! for my cousin's chair.
How does it break? I'm guessing like the bicycles, it's probably some sort of disk break mechanism. It's just not very clear from the photos.
Probably your phone auto corrected, but it should be brake, else you're talking about the failure mode! ;-)
Probably a reasonable thing to worry about with composite wheels!
as far as I recall, wheelchairs don't have brakes.. in fact, the braking is the same as the motive power; hand control on the rim
Odd that you have to read quite far down the site's text until they give the context of the type of wheels they're selling (ones for wheelchairs). The pictures in the background do not make it obvious either.
Presumably the site was designed by someone close to the company, who obviously knows the product and didn't get it tested on users who didn't know the product (or they'd have picked this up)
Presumably the site was designed by someone close to the company, who obviously knows the product and didn't get it tested on users who didn't know the product (or they'd have picked this up)
The top photo, immediately visible on my mobile browser without scrolling, is of their wheels on a wheelchair.
The site didn't load like that when I posted my comment. I had gone back a second time before posting, to be sure. It had a much darker image where it wasn't clear what the item was (you could see the wheel but due to the angle and the dark filter, not what it was part of)
Now I agree there is a video of a wheelchair loading, so context is clear now. Would be curious to know if someone changed it.
Now I agree there is a video of a wheelchair loading, so context is clear now. Would be curious to know if someone changed it.
The interesting bit is found in an animation[1] embedded on the how it works page[2].
1.https://www.loopwheels.com/wp-content/themes/meat/library/im...
2. https://www.loopwheels.com/technical/how-does-it-work/
[edit] formatting
1.https://www.loopwheels.com/wp-content/themes/meat/library/im...
2. https://www.loopwheels.com/technical/how-does-it-work/
[edit] formatting
Why doesn’t the wheel deform at all? If it doesn’t, how is it a suspension?
The wheel will be attached to something that will move.
The animation is somewhat misleading. Each of the three loops has a constant length. In the animation it looks like one loop gets longer whilst another gets shorter but that is not the case.
This company started off making bike wheels circa 2013 - https://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/loopwheels-spokeless-... - I know because I featured them on my own cycling blog too.
A friend of mine has these on a folding bike. I've ridden it a few times, and it seems fine. He certainly likes them - he considers it a shame that he can't get any more!
I was wondering about an application to bikes -- now I wonder why (it seems like) they pivoted to wheelchairs.
In their FAQ they say they're working on MTB wheels, but that the challenge is the (lack of) lateral stiffness in a bigger wheel, which makes sense. The larger the diameter the spring needs to cross, the harder it is to have it only flex in one dimension.
I would imagine weight - especially for road bike tyres.
For comparison, a lightweight Zipp wheelset comes in a just over 1Kg. A mid range lightweight set will be in the 1.4Kg range.
There are other ways to make a road bike handle bumps and road buzz, e.g. specifically constructed carbon seat post, or flexible seat stays.
A good race to watch for these kind of things is the Paris Roubaix, some of the bikes had rubber inserts to the seat stays a few years ago, but now have enough damping just from carbon layup of that section.
For comparison, a lightweight Zipp wheelset comes in a just over 1Kg. A mid range lightweight set will be in the 1.4Kg range.
There are other ways to make a road bike handle bumps and road buzz, e.g. specifically constructed carbon seat post, or flexible seat stays.
A good race to watch for these kind of things is the Paris Roubaix, some of the bikes had rubber inserts to the seat stays a few years ago, but now have enough damping just from carbon layup of that section.
Aerodynamics would be horrible, on road bikes that would be a first order downside.
As well, tires are already integral suspension and often enough for bike applications.
As well, tires are already integral suspension and often enough for bike applications.
Cool, wheels with integrated leaf springs. But what about shocks? What prevents oscillations?
There is a German Opel-manufactured bicycle in the Ulster Transport museum that has short springs mounted all around an inner rim with a metal outer band retaining them.
Apparently due to the shortage of rubber during WW1 which made pneumatic tyres infeasible but I also wonder about oscillations.
Apparently due to the shortage of rubber during WW1 which made pneumatic tyres infeasible but I also wonder about oscillations.
Wow!
But with composite leaf springs, I'm guessing that they could make them less perfectly elastic. That'd damp out oscillations, but also increase rolling friction on bumpy terrain. However, vibration also dissipates energy. My mechanics is inadequate, but they very likely optimized.
But with composite leaf springs, I'm guessing that they could make them less perfectly elastic. That'd damp out oscillations, but also increase rolling friction on bumpy terrain. However, vibration also dissipates energy. My mechanics is inadequate, but they very likely optimized.
In case people don't know, this was a successful Kickstarter a few years ago for bike wheels. They went to bike shows with a lot of enthusiasm but given the additional weight and cost it was likely a hard sell. Great to see they are still around!
I’m always amazed to see how people don’t give up on a great idea. Boy, I wish I was more like that.
Also: quite a nice landing page!
Also: quite a nice landing page!
Rough terrain on bikes was already solved with suspension or larger tires I doubt they managed to create something that worked better than that.
Suspension sits between a wheel and the vehicle so the entire wheel is displaced over a bump which means it’s momentum exaggerates a shock.
Deforming the wheel means far less mass is moved and thus momentum. This is why we use air filled rubber tires in the first place, but they have real size limits. So, this could actually provide a smoother ride.
Probably not worth it for a bike, but someone with a broken bone for example can be extremely sensitive to shocks.
Deforming the wheel means far less mass is moved and thus momentum. This is why we use air filled rubber tires in the first place, but they have real size limits. So, this could actually provide a smoother ride.
Probably not worth it for a bike, but someone with a broken bone for example can be extremely sensitive to shocks.
The Loopwheels page is explicit about the wheels having a rigid rim.
Yea, but the wheel is more than just the rims. Play around here http://www.wheelbuilder.com/wheel-weight-calculator.html. The Rim is generally a large fraction of total wheel weight, but both spokes and Hub's are important.
On a bike the total weight also includes the fork and parts of the suspension. Not sure about wheelchairs, but I suspect deforming the center of the wheel still easily cuts unsprung mass in half.
On a bike the total weight also includes the fork and parts of the suspension. Not sure about wheelchairs, but I suspect deforming the center of the wheel still easily cuts unsprung mass in half.
It's very important to reduce unsprung weight, which this does. Vehicle suspension is extremely complicated with a huge number of interrelated variables. It is always possible to make suspension work better, but normally at the price of being more complicated/more expensive. This is a clever idea that isn't that complicated.
Maybe good for wheelchairs where comfort is crucial, but for anything else (bicycle, car) it would waste a lot of energy, not to mention the rigidity issues.
I wonder if the wheel is more suited to wheelchairs because they are pushed at the rim, rather than turned from the hub (as in a bicycle or car). The whole mechanic whereby the hub moves eccentrically relative to the rim when the springs compress seems likely to create all kinds of rolling resistances if the wheel is being turned from the hub - or even if it is being pushed along undriven by a load at the hub. But the unusual rim-driven mode of wheelchairs maybe is the sweetspot for this kind of thing? In particular, it seems that by compressing the springs in particular directions, torques on the wheels will create linear forces on the load - and vice versa - which might be helpful for things like getting a wheelchair up a curb, or over a bump.
As long as the deformation of the loops is largely elastic, it shouldn't waste significant amounts of energy since the energy stored on every 'up' bump should be returned on 'down' bumps.
The side-to-side rigidity is my worry about it, but I imagine that could be arbitrarily increased by widening the loops.
The side-to-side rigidity is my worry about it, but I imagine that could be arbitrarily increased by widening the loops.
Interesting idea... but not too crazy about the price.
£1,000 for a set of wheels seems pretty expensive.
How much is a standard set of wheelchair wheels?
How much is a standard set of wheelchair wheels?
Matbe it is just me, but isn't £799.00/£849.00 (ex VAT) a tad bit steep as a price?
Not that the alternative posted of "softwheel" are any better, 2250/2800 $ for a couple wheels?
I have quickly browsed through both sites and they seem to put an accent on lower maintenance costs, but for that kind of money you can buy new (traditional) wheels every other month or so ...
Bonus, an article (seemingly actually published) on the matter, it's a short one, only three pages that is IMHO worth reading, only to have an idea of what can be published:
http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jmce/papers/NCRIME-2018/Vol...
Excerpt:
The loop wheels concept is found which has become a very beneficial to the world which reduces the wear and tear of bearing that makes novice after completion its specific life which increases the cost and maintenance of a bicycle. In this case the loop wheels gives a better results and reduces this all the bad impacts created by the normal cycles and gives a one new morning to the innovation.
Not that the alternative posted of "softwheel" are any better, 2250/2800 $ for a couple wheels?
I have quickly browsed through both sites and they seem to put an accent on lower maintenance costs, but for that kind of money you can buy new (traditional) wheels every other month or so ...
Bonus, an article (seemingly actually published) on the matter, it's a short one, only three pages that is IMHO worth reading, only to have an idea of what can be published:
http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jmce/papers/NCRIME-2018/Vol...
Excerpt:
The loop wheels concept is found which has become a very beneficial to the world which reduces the wear and tear of bearing that makes novice after completion its specific life which increases the cost and maintenance of a bicycle. In this case the loop wheels gives a better results and reduces this all the bad impacts created by the normal cycles and gives a one new morning to the innovation.
Your body weight is constantly pressing down the rotating axis from the center of the wheel so in order to move forward you'll be spending energy on compressing the next section of the wheel equally much? Even if you get some of that energy back once the rear section of the wheel decompresses it's never going to be 100%.
It might have some benefits compared to a loosely inflated tire in terms of more parameters to calibrate and less road friction but this will never come close to a suspension locked in the vertical direction on the frame in terms of efficiency. Maybe this is not an important factor for wheel chairs?
Edit: Actually the softwheel has an efficiency comparison which claims it's more efficient than both rigid frame and fork suspension, even on flat ground http://softwheel.technology/technology/#softwheel-science-wo..., maybe if you bike fast enough the wheel never has time to compress so it's still considered round and center?