Vancouver engineer invents self-balancing unicycle  

Oregon Live has a report on the invention of a self balancing unicycle. Note sure I'd ever consider such a thing for personal transport, but some people seem to be into them - Vancouver engineer invents self-balancing unicycle.

Off in the distance, a unicycle rolls around the ellipse that circles downtown's Esther Short Park.

Nothing unusual there, though you might think of Vancouver as more of a meat, potatoes and bicycles-only kind of town. But there's something different about this unicycle.

There's a blocky-looking thing under the saddle. And the rider isn't pedaling, yet the contraption is moving. And the rider is playing a guitar.

By the time the rider rolls into closer view, it's clear that the unicycle is battery-powered. And it's clear that the rider is doing his best to promote the wizardry of inventor Daniel Wood.

Wood, a high school dropout and self-taught engineer, invented the electric, gyroscope-packed, one-wheeled cycle to help launch a new company in downtown Vancouver.

The invention is known as the SBU -- for Self-Balancing Unicycle -- and offers the promise of taking some of the circus-stunt nature of the unicycle to the masses.
Fredrick D. Joe/The OregonianDaniel Wood, co-founder of Focus Designs and inventor of the Self-Balancing Unicycle, demonstrates the battery-powered gadget outside his downtown Vancouver office. Wood, who created the company with his brother, Bobby Wood, is awaiting sales orders after the product became available about two weeks ago.

The SBU delivers on one-half of the equation -- front to back balancing -- but the rider still must figure out the essential left and right balancing that's essential to turning and staying upright.

Nevertheless, Wood, a 30-year-old refugee from a Vancouver high-tech firm where he was laid off last year, has created a product that appears to have few parallels in the market.

He's spent more than two years developing and perfecting the design with this in mind: "I wanted to make something I would want to ride."

There are other electric unicycles, and the two-wheeled Segway has shown the importance of gyroscopes in keeping a wheeled vehicle from tipping. But the SBU appears to be one of a handful to have combined the two features.

Now Wood and his partners need people to pay $1,599 apiece for an SBU in the midst of a recession. Four units are on order, all from people who have said they're interested in being distributors.

Wood has gotten two technological gadgetry celebrities on the SBU -- Adam Savage, host of the Discovery Channel's "MythBusters," and Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway.