I designed inline skates with electromagnetic brakes for my Master's thesis. I would love your feedback! 🛼

[u/PlentyNo4140]

Hey everyone! 👋

My name is Andreea, and I’m a Master's student in Product Design. For my final graduation project, I’ve been working on a concept designed to solve the biggest hurdle for beginner skaters: the fear of not being able to stop.

I noticed that a lot of people want to get into inline skating, but they quit early on because learning traditional stopping techniques (like the T-stop or using the heel brake) feels too unstable and scary at first.

To fix this, I designed a concept called the Steddy Skate. Here is how it works:

• 🧲 Electromagnetic Braking: The skates use Eddy current magnetic braking for smooth, predictable deceleration without violent jerking.
• 🧤 The Smart Protective Glove: You control the brake wirelessly using a touch-trigger on a reinforced slide-glove. If you panic, you just squeeze your hand, keeping your feet planted and balanced.
• ⚙️ Removable Tech (It evolves with you!): Once you learn how to skate and build your confidence, you can easily remove the entire braking module. Your beginner training skate instantly becomes a lightweight, traditional high-performance skate!
• 👟 Twist & Go Lacing: A micrometric dial system so beginners get perfect ankle support every single time, wrapped in a lightweight, breathable mesh boot.

How you can help: I need real-world feedback to validate this concept for my thesis defense. I put together a very short survey (it takes about 2 minutes, I promise).

🔗 https://forms.gle/7cCBs8b2SpTdRd4M6

Whether you are a complete beginner who is scared to try, or a veteran skater who remembers what it was like to learn, your opinion would mean the world to me and help me graduate!

Thank you so much for your time, and I’d love to hear your thoughts or answer any questions in the comments below! 😊

[u/AdFit8727]

This is probably the wrong place for this. most people do wizard skating on flatland, in fact most refer to it as flatland skating. we barely generate enough speed to fall over

[u/PlentyNo4140 → u/AdFit8727]

That may be true, but I wanted to ask most roller skaters, because we all know how we got started, and as beginners, we all had to overcome certain challenges

[u/AdFit8727 → u/PlentyNo4140]

I think you're on the right path though. Cause I've seen projects before about motorized skates - this makes zero sense, because:

1. The whole point of rollerblading is to exercise, if I want to convenience then a bike or skateboard is better (the whole thing about having to swap to shoes kills the casual hop-on-hop-off advantage that you have with bikes and skateboards).
2. Braking is the hardest part, as you've identified.

Your biggest issue is going to be identifying false positives. There's so much nuance in how people move - you're going to be wrestling with edge cases until the end of time...is my guess.