On Tuesday, 25 August 2020 09:21:39 UTC+1, Clive Arthur wrote:
On 25/08/2020 01:31, tabbypurr wrote:
On Monday, 24 August 2020 23:18:08 UTC+1, Clive Arthur wrote:

snipped

You can't exert a torque or force indefinitely without something to
react against, which you don't have with two wheels. So to balance
against a constant side force, the only way to do it is to use your
weight. You need to push the force away to a position where your weight
(the horizontal component) balances the applied force.

I'm making no sense of most of that.

It's not intuitive, but it is fundamental to their operation! You
simply can't generate/supply a torque indefinitely without something to
react against. If you could 'meddle with the laws of physics' in such a
way, satellite manufacturers would be beating a path to your door.

Look at it this way. Without external influence, you can't hold a bike
leaning to one side using gyros, the best you could do is keep it there
for a very short time while your gyros precessed over their useful
range. It's an inverted pendulum and needs constant correction to
remain upright.

You can hold a bike leaning to one side if you let it rest on your
finger, and this is the quiescent situation which the gyros enforce -
touch a balancing bike and your finger is pushed and moved back
dynamically until the system is at rest leaning against it.

I've seen enough footage to know it is workable...

I'd like to see that footage. Yes, it can be made to work after a
fashion, but not well enough for other than novelty or demonstration
purposes. Lit motors has a lot of animations but very little real video
- you'd think no-one had access to a video camera. I don't know if it
was a scam from the start or if there was a sudden 'oh ****' moment when
they made their prototype some years ago.

Google away, there have been a handful of gyro cars, some filmed. Eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTCVn4EByfI


Schilovsky's vehicle was an impractical novelty too, it demonstrated a
principle.

It was a demonstrator for his proposed railway. He drove it around London, it worked.


One of the best photographs from the Brennan monorail shows
his young daughter sat in a small scale monorail car balanced on a wire
rope several feet off the ground. You can see how this might easily
impress investors, though I think Brennan was genuine.

(Gyro bearing seizing is a non-issue from the safety perspective if you
have two.)

The 2 are connected together. If one stops, so does the other. If that didn't happen, things would be much worse!


NT