I was out shopping the other day when I saw a guy riding one of these:
Gyro Wheelchair
He was sitting in it while it was raised up on the two tires. I have to say I was completely amazed that the thing was balancing. I know how gyroscopes work like in a Segway but I thought they had their limitations with needing a low center of gravity to balance.
The 200 lb. guy was sitting high atop this thing balancing on two tires like it was magically being held up. I wondered what would happen if you gave him a shove from the front or back?
I wanted to tell the guy “Sorry, I’m not the kind of person who gawks at the handicapped, but your chair is absolutely amazing.”
Apparently the thing climbs stairs also.
I really don’t particularly want to be in a state where a wheelchair is necessary, but if I had to use one, that IBOT sure would be cool. FWIW, it was invented by Dean Kamen, the same guy that gave us the Segway, among other things.
http://www.dekaresearch.com/ibot.html
What happens if the battery runs out? Does it just fall over backwards?
I’ve never seen one of them in real life (but the descriptions make me very jealous), but any electric scooter or electric wheelchair I’ve seen has a charge indicator; it would make sense for that to have one too so the user would know if the battery was getting weak. As to complete electrical failure, here I’m really guessing but it would make sense to me to design it with failsafes to make it fall onto its other wheels rather than fall over; the gyro is not going to stop suddenly unless something breaks (for it to do what it needs to it’s going to need a fair amount of mass and therefore will have significant inertia) which I hope is unlikely.
