There’s countless threads on how to learn to ride a unicycle, what I’m wondering is would something like this help? Presuming that the hub could link up properly to a unicycle, would a gyroscopic wheel work?
This is not to be confused with a gyroscopic unicycle (the one that Adam Savage promos)
Maybe something like this could help some people learn faster.
But for the most part I want to say this thing can’t be worth it for biking or unicycling.
Some thoughts:
For bikes:
Hmmm, I agree. My trick for teaching a kid to ride a bike is to give them a scooter first. They learn to steer into a lean to balance and by the time they try to ride a bike, all they need to learn is how to pedal. Have seen it work with 3 year olds.
Carey
I don’t think I like that thing… doesn’t seem like it teaches kids any less bad habits than training wheels do, and you can at least adjust training wheels so you can gradually raise their sense of balance, compared to this wheel which does all the balancing for them.
Frankly I don’t think it would help people learn uni any better anyway. When you learn to unicycle you are training your leg muscles to react to a constant change in your center of balance. If the wheel contributes to balancing instead of you doing it all, your legs won’t learn everything necessary and you’ll be falling left and right faster than you could say the Greek alphabet. And, naturally, it’s harder to save yourself, and the uni, when falling to the side compared to forward or backward.
It would not be useful in teaching unicycling. Don’t you remember learning to ride? Falling to the side was not even an issue until you could start pedaling on your own. Learning to ride a unicycle is all about fore-aft balance, and learning to control the wheel that way.
I like it a lot, but not necessarily for teaching kids to ride a bike. It doesn’t teach the bad habits of riding with training wheels though. Those are to rely on the training wheels and not learn how the handlebars make balance corrections. The gyro slows the falling of the bike, so kids can possibly pick up that skill a little quicker. But mostly it would end up being a gimmick for parents that like gadgets.
I remember that by the time my dad took off my training wheels, I was pretty much able to cruise down the street. I didn’t know how to stop though. The gyro wheel would have made my first few stops a little less messy. 
On the other hand, putting it into a BC wheel might fun.
Fun to play with? Yes. I’d love to try it. But it wouldn’t make the BC any easier to ride.
Terrible accent talks about “put air in the tire trough this easy interface”… I think the “interface” looks as easy as this product looks usefull.
The thing makes me think to one of the mant unicycle teachers who holds the seat (in stead of the pupil learns doing this by herself or himself), or who pulls the pupil by the arm (out of the seat - so same problem).
Nice gadget though!!! But I sign up to John’s expectations: it wont make BC’ing easier.
Personally I rather have kids fall on their knees and bleed, and learn how stupid they are, and learn from that. Learn that if you behave stupid, you are stupid, and if you behave smart, you could come to smart results. Rather than a creature that never learns by itself, never learn how to sweat and bleed, and not develop any caracter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkOywUxdUlI
The most misleading part is the pay-off of the movie “Can I try again, daddy?”. How cute… but clearly not realizing reality: no you can’t, as soon the batteries are empty… it will show your skull is empty to, and all rewardings are damped (causing possible psychological damage, that especially develops at older age and so the root is hard to trace). The overprotecting parents placed a helmet on the kid. But if it has no brains to think by itself, then why protect the brains?