Development of a Leaping Mechanism for Electric Skateboards

With the spread of automobiles, problems of air pollution and global warming are becoming serious. To avoid these problems, locomotion by personal mobility vehicles (PMVs) attracts attention. Among the PMVs, electric skateboards have high portability as well as a feature that it can travel long distances with low environmental load by cooperation with public transportation. However, the wheel diameter of the conventional electric skateboards is small, so that it is difficult to get over steps. Therefore, a special electric skateboard is proposed in this study. It has a leaping mechanism consisted of permanent magnets, an electromagnet, and compression springs on the bottom surface of the deck so that the skateboard leaps using the elastic energy of the springs. During normal moving, the compressed state of the springs is maintained by the both types of magnets. When the electricity to the electromagnet is turned off, the elastic energy of the springs is released and the skateboard leaps. In this paper, the design of the leaping mechanism and the experimental result evaluating the leaping performance are described.