Reinventing the Wheel: Adjustable Tire for Rough Terrain

Wheel 2

One of the most important inventions of all time, the wheel, was followed by another – the road. Roads were and always will be the backbone of a town or citie’s infrastructure. Ackeem Ngwenya, a student of Innovation Design Engineering at London’s Royal College of Art, noticed an essential flaw in his homeland of Malawi – that being a lack of a road system. His invention reflects this obstacle.

Wheel 1

An inventive alteration, the ‘Roadless Wheel’ is deemed so because of it’s unique scissor-jack expansion of the wheel’s well. It allows the wheel to stretch or contract, making it more useful and adaptive to harsh driving terrain.

Wheel 3

In Malawi, Ngwenya grew up on a farm, where he noticed people carrying head loads of fifty pounds or more for dozens of miles – a practice still used today. The Roadless Wheel would greatly help this method, and it’s a simpler and more cost-effective improvement to the infrastructure of rural areas of Malawi and other African nations. Help Ngwenya complete his goal and graduate from the RCA through his Indiegogo campaign.

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See more in Mass Transit or under Transportation. December, 2013.