Spherical wheels such as those seen on the Audi's in the movie iRobot along with my interest in the automotive industry inspired me to give some thought on the spherical wheel. This is not my idea but drawings inspired by the concept. In my mind the benefit of having a spherical wheel on a car is maneuverability. The spherical wheel would definitely be less efficient than a standard wheel and would likely have less grip surface area. Plus with today's technology this is not a very feasible idea.

Most of my ideas for this project consisted of ways to arrange magnets so that the car could get both lift and thrust from one magnet arrangement. This picture depicts some of these thoughts, as does the next picture.       Halbach arrays fascinated me for a while and while not drawn here I did think about if there was a way to use them.       The jest of the idea was to have a magnetic structure with in the wheel and rings of magnets outside the wheel that would be oriented perpendicular to the intended direction of movement.      I thought that the inner magnet structure might consist of a geodesic dome style arrangement of individual magents.

The top center sphere better illustrates the concept of how the thrust would be created. The magnetic disks spinning next to the wheel will interact with the magnetic structure within the wheel and cause the sphere to rotate in the same direction as the disc.       Another idea I had is shown in the lower left. The sphere with conical sections in it. My idea was to have an internal structure that rode on bearings so it didn't rotate with the wheel. To make the wheel roll forward the internal structure would be rotated and a displaced center of gravity would cause the wheel to spin. The reaction time of this method (think braking) would be slow and unreliable if it worked.

Copyright, Brian De Vitis, 2011       Contact Me at bdevitis@live.com