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Seeing These Omnidirectional Wheels in Action Is Quite Literally Mesmerizing

What if cars could turn on the spot, just like tanks? Wouldn't that be cool? And what if they could take things even further and move sideways? Well, that would certainly leave the Internet barren of any clip featuring a failed parallel parking attempt.
Liddiard omnidirectional wheels 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
But let's not think solely of those who are parallel parking-impaired, and imagine for a second how many parking spaces would be freed on every street in every town just by canceling those two feet of empty space we leave in front and behind each car.

You would only need one inch on each side, and that's only for your own piece of mind, because technically, it could be even less than that. Pulling out of a tight space would be a thing of the past, replaced by the much more efficient "sliding out."

But how could something like this every work without the need of complicated hardware modifications to your car? It's best you ask Canadian inventor William Liddiard, the man who came up with the prototype you can see in the video below. Besides all the advantages omnidirectional wheels bring on their own (as the name suggests, the ability to go in any direction), Mr. Liddiard's solution adds another, very important one: they don't require any sort of intervention on the vehicle. They simply bolt on, replacing your regular, bi-directional wheels. Or so he says.

Naturally, you need some sort of control over the wheels, so there has to be some wiring that the overexcited inventor forgot to mention. He also claims that the tires are just as hard as a regular set of rubbers, allowing the car to tackle any sort of road. His short description mentions that they can have "the same build characteristics (siping, grooves, rubber compounds, etc.) as regular tires," but looking at how the system works, we fail to see how that could be the case.

The principle is simple enough: the tires are completely sealed, like the old tubes that used to go inside them a few decades ago. The wheels have other, smaller wheels all over their inner and outer rims, which can rotate the tire sideways. Liddiard says that those tiny wheels can develop 24,000 pounds of torque, which is absolutely phenomenal. He readily admits that the value is a bit high and that he should have opted for a faster-gearing setup to speed up the whole process. But it's just a prototype, so the "work in progress" tag applies.

For the moment, Mr. Liddiard's invention is sliding a beat-up Toyota Echo around, but since he claims his patent is pending in several countries, we might see it begin larger scale testing soon. We wouldn't exactly call this a priority for the automotive industry, but it sure is a nice little trick that's probably been eluding us for way too long.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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