Stair-Navigating Skateboard

Energy & Sustainability
Stair-Navigating Skateboard

Po-Chih Lai’s Stair Rover is designed to traverse stairs as easily as flat surfaces.

The piece aims to expanding the capability and possibility of extreme sports as we understand them. Inherited from our natural instincts, sliding as children and snowboarding as adults, the focus is on one of the most influential and stimulating sports – skateboading, aiming to push the boundaries further. The piece creates a groundbreaking form of sport which previously never existed and utilises the hidden energy of our cities – stairs.

[via Core77]

16 thoughts on “Stair-Navigating Skateboard

  1. mpilchfamily says:

    Why ride down the stairs when you can grind the rail?

    Also why did they invert the trucks? Sure the lower the board is the more stable it is but then you have no clearance on larger steps.

  2. miroslava von schlochbaum says:

    Interesting design, very artsy vid, but i wanted to know what purpose the tubing (one going to each wheel) served and failed to discover that. some sort of pneumatic shock absorber or just gratuitous ornament?

    1. chartle says:

      I first though it was a some sort of pneumatic system but now I think the tubing just acts like a mild spring.

      1. miroslava von schlochbaum says:

        …have to be really really “mild”. (spring constant of 2.718 cooked macaroni)

        1. cliff says:

          maybe call it a dampener

  3. 0xfred says:

    A long video with hardly any footage of it actually going down any stairs, which makes me suspect it doesn’t actually do it very well. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

    1. Goli Mohammadi says:

      The part that starts at 0:58 looks pretty convincing to me. And it looks like a much smoother ride down the stairs than I would’ve suspected. But I do agree that they could’ve shown more.

  4. 계단을 항해하는 스케이트보드 | Make: Korea says:

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My interests include writing, electronics, RPGs, scifi, hackers & hackerspaces, 3D printing, building sets & toys. @johnbaichtal nerdage.net

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