Carousels, merry-go-rounds, playground rides, or playground roundabouts have long been a popular equipment on playgrounds for children of all ages, and can be found in numerous different configurations, sizes, functionality, and designs.
Typically such playground roundabouts comprise some sort of platform or seats to accommodate the one or more users and which then is turned either mechanically, by others or by the persons on the roundabout themselves.
Different types of roundabouts exist yielding different types of movement of the user not only making the user circle in a horizontal plane but also move up and down, or spin around his own axis etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,073,595 describes a playground ride where the seating platform is arranged on two freely rotating and separated hubs whose axis of ration are angularly offset resulting in a special combination of circular motion and vertical motion. As the seating platform can be rotated fast or slowly and in changing direction relative to the rotation of the base column is obtained a more exhilarated ride where the resulting movement is perceived as unpredictable by the user.
Another type of exercising device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,290,601 comprising a wobble plate mounted on a single shaft to a base and placed on one side on top of a roller assembly thereby creating a raised position of one portion of the wobble plate. The roller assembly is in one embodiment made from pair of hemispherical balls and held in its radial position by a radial arm connected to the shaft. A person standing on the wobble plate can then set the board in motion. The design with the roller assembly moving between the base and the underside of the wobble board however yields a construction with a relatively high number of movable parts and with a number of places where objects such as clothes, fingers etc. can get caught or entangled. The latter especially makes the exercise device unsuitable as a playground equipment.
EP 1747803 discloses an exercising apparatus of an oscillating platform placed at an angle relative to a support platform and free to rotate around two non-parallel axes. Different configurations of the plate and the axes relative to each other yield different types of motion of the user. Also, the platform rotating assembly may be driven by a gear assembly configured to rotate the platform at a predetermined rate such that the platform rotates relative to the platform by a predetermined amount during use. Thereby the amount of oscillating can be controlled however without influencing the type of motion of the user.