2007 - Electric roller blades

Between 2000-2007 I did some other stuff that unfortunately I don't have any pictures to share with every one.

I was already doing my Mechanical Engineering degree at University of Coimbra when I decided to realize other idea:

"Electric Roller blades"

As you can see the concept it's not very common.
If you look at the first sight there are a lot of things that seem to be really easy to do, but when you start thinking how to apply it, how to develop with fabrication and budget limitations you need to have creativity to have a good result.

When I started to comment this idea with people just a few believed me. Some start laughing about the concept (like its cool but its too much for you to do it by yourself), some said "I don't think that is going to work", others "I just believe when I see it"...just a few believe that I would do it.
The important thing it's when we believe in ourselves and we don't give up. So I forgot all those things that I heard and started develop my idea with lot of hypothesis that took days and days of drawings in SolidWorks.

For example how to apply a Hub with 3 gears from a bicycle into this roller blades:


Its inside the rear wheel of the right foot.


This project were full of "challenges" that I had to fight and find the respective solutions always according with the budget and fabrication limitations that I had.
I'm not writing this blog as a text book explaining all details.The aim is to be illustrative, show and share the main concept and prove when we believe in ourselves we can do it...






This is the kind of Hydro bag that I bought and did some modifications adding the belt with my Grandmother's help to weave things back after all modifications that I had to do.


Regular Model.


Modified Model.


Inside of this bag there is the following a pair of batteries and other controls:


2 Batteries 12V 7Ah each.



The complete equipment.


The next pictures show the hand control which allows to control the acceleration, brake and honk (red button):

• Original lever for the hydraulic brake:

• This picture shows the original hand control that I bought which allows just to control the acceleration:

I didn't want to have in one hand the break lever and on the other the acceleration control.
I gather the two functions by doing some modifications and I also added the horn button to fill the hole left by the modifications.
Again it seems to be really easy to do a control like this when you see the final result, but believe it took me 2 days to check the options and solutions and assembly like this:




The two following pictures shows the application of the gear lever and the charger INPUT on the belt. Also you will be able to see the light (LED) which shows the batteries level.








Finally some detailed pictures of the shoes.
Just to clarify if you are wondering about just one shoe has the power and the break. A lot of people during the development asked the same question and again a lot didn't believe that would work. But I assure that works really GOOD!
Unfortunately I don't have any video of this project to prove that. So I'll update this post next time with a video.


Solid Works assembly picture.



Left shoe.



Right shoe, right view.



Right shoe, left view.



Right shoe, back view.



Right shoe, transmission detail.


This last picture shows the solution that I found to build the pulley:


Solid Works Pulley explode view