There is a set of bike pedals attached to each seat. The chain on each one drives a sprocket attached to the chair’s pivot point. Spinning the pedals tilts the chair and the entire frame reacts by rotating. They only had one set of pedals attached, but it was more than enough to spin the wheel at a pretty good clip. It did look like some damping on the chair pivots would help, since the chairs would swing pretty wildly. I’m sure adding two more chairs would help as well.
A Cyclecide creation [thanks Sasha]
Although it wouldn’t be fun if the other riders decided to whimp out on the pedaling and let one person push all of them.
I was once in one of those two person paddle boats, and my partner had his feet on the peddles but he wasn’t doing any work. I had to paddle for both of us and do the steering. Not like I could curse him out, it was my grandpa…:(
This is a cyclecide (http://www.cyclecide.com/) creation.
yeah, all the stuff they have is really awesome. they also have all kinds of crazy hacked bikes and 2 person thing that you spin in by also pedaling. they should be showcasing their latest stuff at coachella music festival 2006, next weekend.
I saw something like this at Burning Man ’04 but they seemed to have trouble making it work without everyone being the same weight, and cranking at the same speed.
http://michaeldillion.com/img/humanferriswheel.jpg
it also seems like it would be kind of hard to get off. if the first people got off, the other side would swing around because of the imbalance. they probably have some kind of brake though.