- [Jared] You might expect that a car with only two wheels
would tip over on its side, but not this car.
It's called the Gyro-X and it's a self-balancing car.
It does this through the use of a gyroscope.
In this video let's take a look
under the hood to see how it works.
(electronic whirring)
(blasting)
The Gyro-X was developed in the late 1960s.
It was a prototype that was still
years away from completion.
Compared to the other cars of the time, it was smaller,
more aerodynamic, and much more fuel efficient.
The car still needed many improvements, and unfortunately,
the company went out of business
before all the problems could be solved.
For many decades this car was all but forgotten.
Fast-forward to the year 2011
and the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee
purchased the car to restore it to its original condition.
(light jazz music)
The engine is in the back here and it's powered by gasoline.
The front of the car is where the magic happens.
This is the gyroscope, which keeps the car balanced.
To understand how this works,
let's first look at a toy gyroscope.
If you've never played with one of these before
then it can seem really strange at first.
Once the disc in the center is spinning
you can do things like balance it on the edge of a string,
or on the tip of a pencil.
The gyroscope maintains its orientation.
As the spinning disc slows down,
it will start to wobble until it finally
loses balance and falls down.
More sophisticated gyroscopes will have multiple gimbals
so that no matter which way the frame rotates,
the spinning disc can maintain its original orientation.
This is extremely useful with a wide variety of applications
including airplanes, and even space stations
so that they always know which direction they are facing.
But there are some strange properties about
a gyroscope that's not very intuitive.
Let's say our gyroscope is spinning,
and we try to rotate the gyroscope on another axis,
the resulted force is actually 90 degrees in this direction.
This phenomenon is referred to as gyroscopic precession.
This is best demonstrated with another experiment.
Here's a chair that can spin freely.
Now we have a person sitting in
the chair holding a spinning gyroscope.
In this case it's a bike tire,
but this experiment will work
with just about any rotating object.
If the person turns the gyroscope
they will start to spin slowly in the chair.
That is, by applying torque to the gyroscope
the resulted force spins the chair.
And if the gyroscope is turned the other way
the chair will spin the other way too.
I just want to mention that the
bike tire is spinning clockwise,
but if the direction was reversed,
then the chair would spin the other way.
Now let's come back to the Gyro-X car.
Only two wheels here,
so normally this car would tip over to one side.
The gyroscope, however, keeps us balanced.
Let's take a closer look.
Peel away a few layers and you'll get to the flywheel.
This is like the spinning disc in our toy gyroscope.
This weighs about 230 pounds,
and you'll notice that most
of the weight is towards the outside.
The hydraulic pumps will get it spinning
at about 3,000 rotations per minute.
The increased weight and speed,
at least when compared to our toy gyroscope,
means that the forces here are going to be strong enough
to balance the entire weight of this car.
The flywheel is placed inside of the gimbal housing.
There's an arm that's attached to the side here.
This is called the precessional ram.
It's responsible for turning the gyroscope.
This will happen when a control system
senses that the car is off balanced,
or when the car is making a turn.
Here's the gyro housing.
And this is all put inside of a frame,
which then goes under the hood of the Gyro-X car.
So what happens here is that when the gyroscope turns
it creates a force strong enough to balance the car.
It's the same effect that happens
in the experiment with the swivel chair.
It might be easier to visualize this
if we turn the experiment on its side,
and maybe ignore gravity.
Turn the gyro and the person rotates.
It's the same thing with the car.
Turn the gyro and the car wants to rotate,
or in this case balance out.
What I'm gonna do here is show a few different situations
and how the gyroscope will adjust.
When the car is at rest,
the gyroscope slowly turns to keep the car balanced.
Now let's say something pushes against the side of the car.
Boom!
Notice how quickly the gyroscope has to respond
to create a force strong enough to balance the car.
The car also might get off balanced.
This might happen in the case of
the driver sitting off to one side.
Now let's see the car in motion.
Going in a straight line there might be a slight wobble,
just as we've seen before.
When turning the car the gyroscope
helps assist in making the turn.
Notice how it turns in the same direction as the front tire.
I think that's pretty cool.
When we're done driving the two side wheels
come down to stabilize the car,
otherwise it would eventually tip over.
The flywheel has enough momentum that it will continue
to spin for up to two hours on its own.
It's too bad this car never hit the production line.
It would've been really neat to own one.
But luckily if you ever find yourself
in Nashville, Tennessee you can go visit
the Lane Motor Museum to see this car in person.
The museum specializes in unique cars from around the world
with many unusual vintage cars
that you won't see anywhere else.
My name's Jared and I make 3D animated videos
on how things work.
Click the cards onscreen to see of my other animations.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.