YouTuber builds funky cycle with special triangular wheels

“The Q” has now made a second attempt at reinventing the wheel: Triangle wheels. This time, they do roll.

But how can triangles roll, you might ask?

These wheels are Reuleaux triangles— also known as spherical triangles— and can be constructed from three circles, as “The Q” can be seen doing in the video.

Alternatively, they can also be created by rounding the sides of an equilateral triangle by drawing three circular arcs connecting two vertices of the triangle and centered at the third.

Any pair of parallel lines that touch Reuleaux triangles without crossing through them have the same Euclidean width between them.

This constant width allows these special triangles to maintain contact with the surface they roll on with a contact patch of the same size. In contrast, a regular triangle, whose contact patch varies as it rotates, wobbles and loses contact with the surface.

Another application of Reuleaux triangles is in rotary Wankel engines popularized by the Mazda RX-7 and RX-8.

“The Q” fabricated a pair of arms and a roller for each “wheel,” allowing their centers to move linearly, with each roller and the flat ground forming a pair of parallel lines.

Although the ride does not look to be the smoothest ever, the idea is certainly worth exploring. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, we might see vehicles using Reuleaux triangles to move.