Honda U3-X is Pure WTF on Wheels, I Mean Wheel
Honda’s latest journey into the land of personal mobility products has cemented them into the “WTF” category (as if ASIMO hadn’t accomplished this already). The Honda U3-X is a personalized unicycle – one wheel and a seat, that looks as though it should be placed in MOMA between Picasso & Basquiat.
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We applaud Honda for creating some of the most environmentally friendly modes of transit we’ve ever seen, albeit odd looking. Honda’s device is supposed to mimic how a human walks, by the way you sway your body the device shifts, turns, whathaveyou. Whatever happened to just using your legs? Here’s a snippet from the Press Release:
This new personal mobility device makes it possible to adjust speed and move, turn and stop in all directions when the rider leans the upper body to shift body weight. This was achieved through application of advanced technologies including Honda’s balance control technology, which was developed through the robotics research of ASIMO, Honda’s bipedal humanoid robot, and the world’s first* omni-directional driving wheel system (Honda Omni Traction Drive System, or HOT Drive System), which enables movement in all directions, including not only forward and backward, but also directly to the right and left and diagonally. In addition, this compact size and one-wheel-drive personal mobility device was designed to be friendly to the user and people around it by making it easier for the rider to reach the ground from the footrest and placing the rider on roughly the same eye level as other people or pedestrians.
Sep 30th, 2009 at 10:18 am
[...] scheduled for production and year or two – you know they have to finish marketing the U3-X and ASIMO robot first. You can’t take over the world with a minivan alone. But the largest [...]
Nov 2nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
[...] bases to the big 1-0, and even inspired a cluster of offspring based off Honda research, including Honda U3-X and Honda [...]