I talked a bit about electric bikes in my last post, so today I will share a different take on that subject. Meet Joules, the stoker on Carl’s home built electric tandem. Carl challenged himself by asking, “Could I build an electric tandem based on actually pumping the pedals?” The result is a design that is indirectly driven by a PMG-132 electric motor through a linkage that simulates the motion of human legs pedaling. Carl points out on the Endless-sphere E- bike forum that:
“The fun part was coming up with a drive linkage that would use human-proportional legs to pedal in a circle matching the pedal cranks. The linkage delivers force tangent to the crank circle through the whole pedal revolution.”
I think this really is an interesting project and an impressive build by Carl. See the additional photos on his forum post and be sure to check out his video of Joules in action. Now if he could only get Joules to carry on a conversation, he would make a great robotic tandem partner.
Since this post is about an interesting and unusual creation, I will direct you to one other. The Hopworksfiets, as this Bike Portland post points out, is a “party bike complete with wood bar, kegs on tap, pizza rack, sound system, and mountains of mojo.” Looks like fun…and it is probably no surprise that it was made in Portland.
One last link while I am posting; BikeRadar has an interview with Specialized design director Robert Egger that is definitely worth checking out. It’s a great interview with a pretty interesting guy. For more about Egger, click through to to the Specialized podcast interviews with him from a few years ago.
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