tomislavp4: there have been some threads on new wheels, including the osmos one. Here you have an example of an everyday vehicle with one.
My only brother uses one we built with "colombian" materials because it has an enormous advantage for discapacited people: you do not bang your fingers on the spokes. Besides, the design implies a weight reduction (notice how the "base" of the bearing doubles as part of the chassis).
You might be interested on a thread we had on other kind of wheels (
here). There you'll find air bearings based on the osmos design and a favorite of mine: the Halbach array that you maybe would like to study a little (is one of the most ingenious things of recent invention seen, it behaves as a monopole, believe it or not). I repost the photo provided in that thread, in hopes somebody have a good idea about it: notice how it is based on a clever array of magnets nobody tought before, seem appropriate for the osmos wheel, and no current is necessary:
Recently, DaveKillens posted something about the design you suggest on a thread that was related somehow to spokes on wheels, pondering (correctly, I believe) if the weakening of the wheel structure on torque generated stress is the main reason is not used on car wheels: normal wheels have to transmit torque from an axle toward the periphery of the wheel and the osmos wheel is structurally not very good under these conditions. Of course, in the wheelchair shown this is not a problem at all: not only the stresses are very small, but the torque is applied directly to the rim. Maybe Dave remembers on which thread he made his comments or how to search for them.
Nobody pointed out in the "Dave" thread that the speed of the rolling elements is higher and this means a reduced life or higher weight: there are very precise equations for wear, used for example in gear trains to shave the weight as much as possible. We also talked about these gear train restrictions in some other thread (gear trains are dimensioned for a very precise design life, they even make them of super-expensive titanium, following Minardi's breakthrough design).
We also spoke somewhere in the forum, but could not provide a picture (I swear I saw it) of a french conceptual vehicle that had an osmos wheel around the cockpit (enormous one) and somebody posted a photo or perhaps a video of a working unicycle of similar design with some kind of Hell's Angel on board, if I remember well.
