Or, rather, making blueprints of air treks and not having the money to buy the actual components or parts I know I'll need. Anyways! My ideas for the blueprints are as follows:
There are two main issues with the air trek as it stands: it might be too big/bulky, or it might be too heavy. The two problems are, in fact, connected to one another, which makes motorized skates unlikely, though there may be a happy medium. My solution to the problem of weight/size is to use a small battery between the two wheels (and heavily protected to prevent breakage of the possibly corrosive insides), and to use small magnets inside the wheels themselves surrounded in a semi-circle by a thin copper sheet inside the wheel well. As the wheels spin, the copper plates recharge the battery due to electromagnetism. And the battery is only actually powering the motor some of the time, specifically when the rider pushes against the bottom of the skate. This means a longer time to build up speed, but it should solve the problem of both size and weight by reducing the required size of the power source.
The next problem is stopping or slowing down. To this end, I'm thinking that a "free-spin" mode may be required, which allows the wheels to spin freely, like normal roller blades. Actual brakes or other sudden stops are out of the question: unlike cars, there are no seatbelts to stop your body from flipping through the air at 50mph or so. I thought about a parachute, but decided that it would have the opposite effect; a person would end up on their ass every time they tried to stop. I've since decided on a hand-deployable "man-chute", essentially the same as the type of body-suit used by sky-divers, with a skin between the arms and the body and between both legs. The only thing stopping this from being a worthy way to stop is the idiocy of how it would look and how impossible it would be to get up to speed with 'chutes on your arms and legs.
This is as far as I've gotten with my ideas, and I'm not even to ideas about jumping/landing. I've been thinking about pneumatics/hydraulics, but that means more gadgets in VERY limited space. Any thoughts?
There are two main issues with the air trek as it stands: it might be too big/bulky, or it might be too heavy. The two problems are, in fact, connected to one another, which makes motorized skates unlikely, though there may be a happy medium. My solution to the problem of weight/size is to use a small battery between the two wheels (and heavily protected to prevent breakage of the possibly corrosive insides), and to use small magnets inside the wheels themselves surrounded in a semi-circle by a thin copper sheet inside the wheel well. As the wheels spin, the copper plates recharge the battery due to electromagnetism. And the battery is only actually powering the motor some of the time, specifically when the rider pushes against the bottom of the skate. This means a longer time to build up speed, but it should solve the problem of both size and weight by reducing the required size of the power source.
The next problem is stopping or slowing down. To this end, I'm thinking that a "free-spin" mode may be required, which allows the wheels to spin freely, like normal roller blades. Actual brakes or other sudden stops are out of the question: unlike cars, there are no seatbelts to stop your body from flipping through the air at 50mph or so. I thought about a parachute, but decided that it would have the opposite effect; a person would end up on their ass every time they tried to stop. I've since decided on a hand-deployable "man-chute", essentially the same as the type of body-suit used by sky-divers, with a skin between the arms and the body and between both legs. The only thing stopping this from being a worthy way to stop is the idiocy of how it would look and how impossible it would be to get up to speed with 'chutes on your arms and legs.
This is as far as I've gotten with my ideas, and I'm not even to ideas about jumping/landing. I've been thinking about pneumatics/hydraulics, but that means more gadgets in VERY limited space. Any thoughts?