A Motorcycle You Can Wear

This motorized exoskeleton concept looks like the lovechild of Ironman and a Segway—but is it the future of transportation?

By Mike Spinelli
Posted 05.29.2008 at 5:05 pm

Deus Ex Machina: Photo by Jake Loniak

The tripod is a fine and stable construct for photography and navigation, but how well will it work for motorcycles? We're not sure,
but one student at California's Art Center Pasadena is challenging singletrack motorcycles and typical three-wheelers with an anthropomorphic, Yamaha-branded three wheeler concept called the Deus Ex Machina.

The forward-looking personal conveyance is a mobile exoskeleton propelled by in-wheel electric motors—or, more succinctly, a trike you can wear.

The machine's motors get their juice from a hybrid power pack of doped Nanophosphate batteries and ultracapacitors. It's straight from the imagination of Jake Loniak, who foresees acceleration of zero to sixty in three seconds and a top speed of 75 mph. It also has seven artificial vertebrae, 36 pneumatically activated "muscles" and an attached helmet, just the thought of which gives us a phantom neck ache.

[via Hell for Leather]