Massachusetts - Many students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology look forward to the day they'll make headlines with an extraordinary invention. But Ben Gulak, a 19-year-old freshman, looks back. He's the inventor of the Uno, an electric motorcycle that has its two wheels side by side instead of fore and aft, balances using a computer and gyroscope, and maneuvers with a shift of the rider's body forward, back or sideways.
Ben Gulak, a freshman at M.I.T., going for a spin on his Uno, an electric motorcycle that has side-by-side wheels and achieves balance using a gyroscope.
Mr. Gulak, from a suburb of Toronto, began pursuing the concept two years ago after returning from a family trip to smog-choked China and seeing streets clogged with sputtering motorbikes. Battery power would avoid pollution, and the small size would allow the cycle to negotiate crowded streets - and even to be carted up to an apartment.
He retreated to the machine shop in his house assembled with gear he inherited from his grandfather and, initially for a science fair, began assembling a prototype from conventional motorcycle parts. The project, he says, allowed him to "mesh two passions" - engineering and motorcycles. As he describes it, the early effort - replete with burning motors - resembled the scenes in the movie "Iron Man" when a rocket-propelled suit goes out of control. Mr. Gulak got help from a robotics engineer, Trevor Blackwell, and added systems that stabilize the vehicle.
Since then, he has won a heap of accolades - Popular Science chose the bike as one of the top 10 inventions of the year and featured it on the cover; Mr. Gulak made an appearance on "The Tonight Show" - as well as the interest of investors.
But for now he's seeking international patents, and dealing with exams.
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Ben Gulak, a freshman at M.I.T., going for a spin on his Uno, an electric motorcycle that has side-by-side wheels and achieves balance using a gyroscope.
