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Object Culture

An Innovative Way to Carry Heavy Items: The Monowalker Fatmate

If a stretcher and a unicycle had a baby

By Rain Noe - November 1, 2018

Some friends of mine in NYC have a high-school-aged daughter whose backpack keeps ripping. They've purchased a high-quality Patagonia backpack, but even that could not survive her daily regimen--carrying 40 pounds of books from their home in one borough to her school in another borough. I asked them why she doesn't use a rolling carry-on bag, and they explained that those are impractical for going up and down subway station stairs.

That got me thinking about how people carry heavy things over long distances. While this item below wouldn't work for my urban-dwelling friends' daughter, I did find it a novel solution for hauling things over uneven terrain. The Monowalker Fatmate gets the weight off of your back using physics and a wheel.

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Here's how it's used in the field, in both forward and aft positions, carrying about 90 pounds of gear :

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The fact that it's connected to a harness means I wouldn't use it on a steep trail, or anyplace where I might fall and have the rig pull me or tangle me up; I could see that ending badly. Perhaps that could be remedied with some kind of breakaway connection points, though there is still the issue of the handles binding you up.

That being said, I could see this being useful for hauling things around the farm, when you require the free hands that a wheelbarrow wouldn't allow. One thing that prevents me from picking one up to experiment is the price: The German-designed Fatmate runs €836, about USD $953.

Object Culture

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

1 Comment

Austin Liu

7 months ago

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Reply

This design still puts far too much weight on the human pulling it. This is a reverse wester-style wheelbarrow.

The ancient Chinese style wheelbarrow has the wheel under the center of gravity, such that the human using it doesn't bear any of the weight, and only provides traction. As a result of this design, the Chinese wheelbarrow permits individuals to move over a ton.

We shouldn't be surprised by the notion of a person rolling around loads that heavy; pallet jacks work the same way, and are regularly used to move loads far too heavy to move with a wheelbarrow. When the user only needs to steer and provide traction rather than bearing the load, the whole arrangement is simply more ergonomic.

I contend that if they redesigned this with this wheel-under-center-of-gravity principle, it would be even better.

See this article from Lowtech Magazine on the Chinese Wheelbarrow. In ancient times, they even put sails on these wheelbarrows, so the human only needed to steer, and didn't even need to provide traction.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-wheelbarrow.html

The modern incarnation of this invention is the Honey Badger Wheel:
https://www.notechmagazine.com/2016/03/chinese-wheelbarrow-meet-the-honey-badger-wheel.html

If you turn this honey badger wheel thing around and pull it, you have what I'm proposing above. The only thing about this honey badger wheel design is that the load has to be balanced on both sides of the wheel, If a smaller wheel were used, and the load were placed over it, that problem would go away.

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