Human locomotion circa. 500 BCE A person carrying someone else on their
back is most commonly seen in the modern day in the form of a
parent carrying their child, either for
travelling or for
children's games. It can involve the carrier
crawling on hands and knees with the child
straddling over the back like
riding a horse, or with the carrier standing
upright with the child
hugging or
cradled behind the back, often with the child's arms leaning over the carrier's
shoulders and legs wrapping around the
flanks. Piggybacking may also feature in the context of play or sport, and evidence of this dates back to
Ancient Greece where games involving piggyback riding were combined with the requirement of catching or throwing a ball. In the modern era,
wife carrying competitions, where the female participants ride on the back of their male partners running the race, are popular in some countries.
Rail s on continuous rails laid on
standard gauge flatcars (
outback Australia) In rail transport, the practice of carrying trailers or
semi-trailers in a train atop a
flatcar is referred to as "piggybacking". Early drawings of the
Liverpool & Manchester Railway c1830 show road coaches being piggybacked on railway flat wagons. The rail service provided for trucks which are carried on trains for part of their journey is referred to as a rolling road, or
rolling highway. A related transportation method is the rail transport of
semi-trailers, without
road tractors, sometimes referred to as "trailer on flatcar (TOFC)". In the United States, TOFC traffic grew from 1% of freight in 1957 to 5% in 1964 and 15% in 1986. Japan Railways planned a similar "
Train on Train" scheme, but at much higher speeds, to operate from 2016.
Trucking For
semi trucks the trucks can be stacked 4 deep if it is just a day-cab truck and only 3 deep if it has a
sleeper-cab. The trucks drive up a ramp or are lifted into place by a
tow hook on the front bumper, from a heavy-duty
tow truck or
overhead crane. A saddle is placed on the
fifth-wheel, that the front axle of the next truck is attached to, which is called decking. The mirrors are folded in on the trucks being hauled for width requirements and safety. For undecking the trucks, a tow truck or overhead crane is used again. It is typically used to transport newly built or purchased trucks.
Marine Small ships of all kinds can be
piggybacked on larger ships. Examples include
lifeboats,
landing craft, and
minesweepers on
motherships, as well as
midget submarines on larger
submarines, such as those used for the
1942 Japanese submarine attack on Sydney.
Microcontrollers A
piggyback microcontroller refers to a type of microcontroller setup where an external memory chip, typically an
EPROM, is mounted directly on top of the microcontroller chip—often via a
socket. This configuration allows for easy swapping or reprogramming of the firmware without replacing the entire microcontroller.
Air transport The 1930s British
Short Mayo Composite, in which a smaller, four-engine
floatplane aircraft named Mercury was carried aloft on the back of a larger four-engine
flying boat named Maia, enabled the Mercury to achieve a greater range than would have been possible had it taken off under its own power. The American
Space Shuttle was carried on top of specially-modified
Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft when the shuttle landed at places other than Kennedy Space Center.
Space In space transportation systems, a smaller
satellite that is carried as a secondary payload on a
launch is said to be "piggybacked" on the main launch. It is often the case of
small satellites and
cubesats, since they can not usually afford accessing space on a dedicated launch and they choose instead to take profit of the remaining payload capacity in a big satellite launch. However, this is usually at the cost of not being able to fly to their desired
orbit and having to remain on a similar orbit to that of the big satellite.
Military The metal caterpillar treads of a
tank wear out quickly when travelling long distances on ordinary roads. Also, tracked vehicles seriously damage the tarmac layer of ordinary roads (unless the caterpillar treads are specially fitted with rubber pads to avoid this). It is therefore necessary to provide
tank transporters, which have rubber tires, to the battlefield. == Gallery ==