Revolve Brings You a Reinvented Wheel - After Millenia

Now, taking on the wheel is a very bold move. It’s damn near perfect. The only other shape that would favor terrestrial travel better might be a sphere. But that’s a whole ‘nother ball game.

Knowing this, the design team from Revolve, led by Andrea Mocellin, has sought only to redesign a small sector of wheel-use, urban mobility. What Revolve wheels has done is redesign the bicycle wheel. And I must say, it looks pretty cool.

Since 2014, Mocellin has been working on redesigning this small sector of our lives. After almost four years, the design was ready to be touched and even used.

The first step in the tackling such project is the research stage. The team looks at all possible applications and existing desings for current wheel use. By analyzing a diverse number of wheel shapes, wheel functions, and wheel applications, the team began getting an idea about how they wanted this thing to look and how it could possibly work. From there it's on to the next step.

Using something called the Hobermann Principles, the Revolve team started putting the mechanism into use. Hobermann is some dude that put together a spherical shape that expands or contracts as you push or pull on it. You’ve probably seen them in toy stores. That functionality and design was then applied to what Revolve had come up with in the research stage and the wheel began to take shape.

The third and final stage of any functional concept is the prototyping and testing phase. Here, the team was able to finally push out a functioning design after 100 or more 3D models and 10+ physical prototypes.

I must say that the final product was worth the wait. It looks hella cool. But that’s only after you see how it works. Just have a look in the gallery.

The wheel doesn’t look much different than your average bike wheel, and it shouldn’t. The only difference may be that it’s spoke-less and has two huge hubs on either side. But those hubs seem to be the key to the design. As you pull on them, the wheel breaks apart and begins to fold into six segments held together by joint-like structures. If you continue to pull the mechanism, the tread eventually folds neatly into that small handheld structure you see.

This wheel design has applications even further than just bicycles. Another place Revolve has applied this wheel design has been on wheelchairs. Which I find rather ingenious seeing as how most wheelchairs are already made to fold by design.

But now, why make only foldable wheels? Why not make a whole folding bike? No idea. But then again, this wheel doesn’t seem to need a specific frame, making it seemingly applicable to anyone who has an adult bike frame. The same seems to be true for the wheelchair as well and possibly even on the Fliz.

But don’t put Revolve out of the game just yet. They seem to offer a lot of different vehicles and designs on their website, so the future could very well bring us a fully foldable bike branded Revolve.