Michael Reeves Constructed a Automotive out of Lime Scooters

Go to virtually any city space in america and also you’ll discover the sidewalks plagued by rentable electrical scooters. These present handy and inexpensive short-range transportation, however they’re additionally infamous for filling the native emergency rooms with contemporary sufferers. Accidents are extraordinarily frequent and these scooters have rapidly developed unhealthy reputations within the areas the place they’re obtainable. Michael Reeves has a buddy that broke his arm in a type of accidents and that motivated Reeves to construct a “safer” “automotive” out of electrical scooters.

The concept was fairly easy: strap collectively 4 scooters to create a car-like automobile. As a result of it might probably’t fall over, it’s ostensibly safer than a two-wheeled scooter alone. Reeves lives in LA the place Lime-branded scooters reign supreme. Much like scooters from different manufacturers, customers provoke leases by means of an app. That unlocks the chosen scooter, letting the person trip to their vacation spot. After the journey, the person can depart the scooter on the sidewalk for another person to hire subsequent.

Reeves wished his “automotive” body to work with Lime scooters which might be in-service. The benefit being that if one scooter’s battery dies, the driving force can swap that scooter out for an additional. In addition they wouldn’t should buy any scooters outright. The drawback is that Reeves couldn’t completely modify any of the scooters, which made the entire mission tougher.

For that purpose, Reeves hooked up an Arduino improvement board to every scooter’s handlebar. The Arduino controls a servo motor that pushes the throttle lever. A pneumatic piston actuates the brake lever. To steer the automobile, Reeves wanted to have the ability to management every scooter’s throttle independently and so a laptop computer on the automobile connects to the Arduino boards. A Nintendo Wii steering wheeling gives enter, with a Python script translating that enter into throttle instructions.

Reeves first carried out this concept with a inflexible wooden body, however discovered that it didn’t flip as anticipated. He then went again to the drafting board and welded collectively a metal tube body. That has a bearing appearing as a pivot level, so the entrance two scooters can flip just like the entrance wheels of your automotive. That was efficient and gave the automobile the power to navigate turns. There’s even a pneumatic “kick-off” piston to mechanically get the scooters going.