Could "AIR GEAR" Inline Skates Be Built?

[jimmy1200]

Could This Be Built!

this will be interesting.
okay. there is this japanese manga called AIR GEAR by oh great!. its excellent and its about inline skaters who use skates that have motorized wheels. the skates also have air cushion suspension and blah blah. the speed depends on how much force you apply downward onto the wheels or something like that. well anyways. can this be made?

 

[Danger]

Although I'm not sure exactly what it is you mean, I can't see anything wearable having powerful enough motors to do more than hum and heat up.

 

[SkepticJ]

this will be interesting.
okay. there is this japanese manga called AIR GEAR by oh great!. its excellent and its about inline skaters who use skates that have motorized wheels. the skates also have air cushion suspension and blah blah. the speed depends on how much force you apply downward onto the wheels or something like that. well anyways. can this be made?

All the currently existing motors I know of wouldn't be strong enough to do anything beyond perhaps a slow roll on level ground. However, I've read about Drexler motors, and they'd easily be strong enough to power such skates. I'm afraid you'll have to wait decades for technology to get up to this level though, sorry.

 

[jimmy1200]

figured as much. just thought it would be interesting to see what replies would come forth. the wheels are actually quite big on the skates in the manga. about three times the size of normal race skate wheels. if you do a image google, some pictures will pop up with the characters and you can see the size of the wheels I am talking about.if that makes a difference or not.
they do some to wild stuff in the manga, but could you imagine the freedom of some inline skates that could go up to or beyond 50mph and how many people would hurt themselves

 

[SkepticJ]

figured as much. just thought it would be interesting to see what replies would come forth. the wheels are actually quite big on the skates in the manga. about three times the size of normal race skate wheels. if you do a image google, some pictures will pop up with the characters and you can see the size of the wheels I am talking about.if that makes a difference or not.
they do some to wild stuff in the manga, but could you imagine the freedom of some inline skates that could go up to or beyond 50mph and how many people would hurt themselves

Larger wheels would help to lower the speed the bearings are spinning at, but liquid, air (and even magnetic, though they're currently bigish and must have a computer controling them) bearings exist so this isn't as huge an issue; unless I'm wrong of course. The main problem is just having powerful enough motors so small. What MAYBE could currently be done though is to wear a lawnmower sized engine on one's back and have spinning cords going through flexible protective tubes(kind of like those Dremel attachments that let the tool's drive bend to get the tool into tight spaces) to get the engine's power down to the skate's wheels. You won't be doing inline skate tricks with 50lbs on your back, but it's better than nothing.