Are examples of why engineers and scientists hate journalists so much. IT does not respond to your thoughts - don’t pretend like it does.
I also hate the line
“Five cents” measured how? Just across the US on an average day “five cents” can buy you anywhere from 1 kWhr to 0.33 kWhr - a 3:1 difference. Or maybe he’s talking about at the busbar, yeah, that’s it, where “five cents” might be worth about 20 kW*hr on a good day… Unless your trip is downhill both coming and going, I challenge the “five cent” statement.
Hey, hold up on the facts - this is a speculation thread.
Actually, I think DDG is on the right lines with her “next extreme sport” theory. This is going to introduce extreme sports to everyone! Supposedly the guy has managed to create a self righting, instantly reactive, gyroscopically controlled platform. Imagine what would happen if you combine that with a snowboard - even your granny will be doing triple black diamond runs.
Yeah, but my point was, it looks really slow. I actually DON’T think it’s the next Xtreme sport. And I don’t see why you couldn’t ride this on the sidewalk, why you’d have to ride it out in traffic–it’s SLOW. It actually doesn’t look like it goes faster than a walking pace, so you couldn’t keep up with traffic anyway. Now I didn’t see the entire segment, but you lean forward to make it go, and it looked like leaning forward even more wouldn’t make it go any faster–it would just tip you over on your face.
Kamen kept saying, over and over again, “If you get bumped into by someone riding a Segway, it’s just like getting bumped into by a pedestrian.” I think the point he was trying to make was that even places like the mall and the public library that ban scooters will allow this, precisely because it IS so slow, and stable. They had Charlie Gibson et al wearing bicycle safety helmets, which looked rather silly, given that they were tooling around the obstacle course at about 1/32 mph.
Although I do like the mental image of Granny Olympics with Segways. The 50 Yard Glide… The Wal-Mart Aisle Obstacle Course…
They call it the Segway Human Transporter. You just know that in our abbreviated world, it will become the SHT.
So to all you naysayers, I tell you this is the SHT. All you have to do is stand on this SHT, and it goes. If you want to pick up the SHT, it’s only 65 pounds so you can take a SHT anywhere! And seeing as it is near the holiday season, maybe you could give a SHT, but personally, I couldn’t give a SHT. And I wouldn’t worry about anyone stealing the thing beacuse everyone would see him and yell, “Look! That guy’s taking a SHT! And right out in public!” But I’m sure they will sell out and you will be hunting from store to store just like a detective to find one, but every clerk will tell you, “No SHT, Sherlock.” So I just want to tell you that I’ll be standing on my SHT as soon as I can.
Hmm, A vehicle for travelling distances too close to drive and too far to walk? That are simple to use? I think I’ve heard of these, they have only been around for 100+ years, long enough that many places have infrastructure in place to support them. They are called bicycles.
Actually I think the active balance thing is a cool technology (trying to find a good application), not sure it really appeals to the rascal http://www.rascalscooters.com/index.html crowd tho
Brian
I think its a neat idea but the consumer version is supposed to cost $3K… THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. I don’t know about you, but I think thats pretty steep.
Supposedly it can do 14 mph, which is faster than most people can run.
If this thing really does cost $3,000, it’s dead in the water; no private citizen is going to pay $3,000 for this thing. That’s a ludicrous price for something that isn’t substantially more practical than walking or riding a bicycle. And it weighs SIXTY-FIVE pounds. I was under the impression that this thing was supposed to be portable. A sixty-five pound machine is far too heavy to lug around with you - geez, that’s a heavy load. It eliminates any chance that this thing could be used as a portable device for the elderly or the infirm. My Grandma sure as hell couldn’t pick it up.
If it works as advertised, one market I would see for it would be postal carriers. Assuming it holds up to heavy use, I can see why it would make a letter route easier, and the standing-position nature of it would make it easy to lug a big load around. But for the general public this contraption is certainly not going to change the world.
Look, why don’t you all go back and read the Time article? It quite clearly explains that it goes about 3 times walking pace. Also, it is impossible to tip over in it, as it compensates.
I imagine it would be quite difficult to steal too - it would have a key, and the wheels would lock so that you cannot wheel it off.
I think that it will probably flop - the next, cheaper version will be more popular. However, that doesn’t make it a bad invention, it has applications, especially for postal services etc. However, it does look like another step towards humans becoming just big lumps of fat with a brain on top. Walking to the fridge is almost the only thing left that keeps most people’s muscles from atrophying.
Uhhh…I did read the article - I quoted from it above, see? The article, scientifically speaking, is worthless for describing what it actually is and does. It presented it as a thought-controlled miracle machine that has no way of going, no way of stopping, and and whatever it does it takes pennies to run, regardless of the situation or circumstances.
Impossible to tip over? “Impossible” is a pretty powerful word - I’ll hazard I can tip it over pretty easily if I tried…it’s not magic, people. It’s a scooter. One which will be used by the well-heeled skate-rats in my neighborhood, and likely no one else.
And where I live (which is the 99% of the US land area that is not in a dense urban environment), the postman either drives from mailbox to mailbox because his route is so long, or he walks across lawns to get from box to box. This device would be worthless for most all neighborhoods where I live.
Remember that some of the hype about IT came from Steve Jobs, who I personally heard at a computing conference say in 1998 that “by 2001 50% of all computers on corporate desktops will be Macs”.
IT is obviously not for everyone’s use, but I could easily see it working extremely well in the inner cities, such as NYC, or Dallas, or L.A. It’s not, obviously, an all-weather viehicle, but I can already see an after-market industry selling things like umbrellas that clamp onto the pedistal for rainy days, and so-on. Snow or ice would require a car still.
The reason so many people that knew about IT said it would require a redesign of inner cities is because you’re not going to (in practice) be able to fit it in the same space as foot pedestrians. Top speed is billed as 12mph, too fast by thrice for foot pedestrians. I’ll tell you what though, at 65lbm, and a fairly small footprint, it’d fit in my office quite nicely. During my first client engagement with a client in NYC, I was walking about 12 long blocks from Penn Station, taking about 20-25 minutes to get where I was going. IT would’ve been very nice to have, especially on the rush to catch the 5:35 Metroliner back home every night. During my last client engagement in NYC, I was working at 71st and York, about a $7 taxi-ride away, each direction. If I’d had IT available, I’d have saved the client over US$1000 in expensed taxi rides.
IT is not a commuter vehicle, but I could sure as hell use IT around my hometown, too. I live in a college town, and much of the town is pedestrian friendly, but it’s just a bit too spread out to make foot travel practical for most people. Increasing my speed to about 12mph would put every place in town accessable without needing a car, a condition I would welcome.
As for a heavier verion, well, the first sales are going to companies and organizations that can afford the heavier industrial version, so IT’s already available in a “big” version, but you’ll pay more.
I figure it could reduce car usage by about 25% across the US (with resultant reduced gas and insurance costs). I think all our green-house emmissions concerned folk around the world would applaud.
I know actual people who rushed out and paid $3,000 for HDTV when it first came out. I imagine these will be the same people who will rush out and buy a Segway.
I concour that the idea would be to have “it” go places you would normally walk, jog and such. I can already see “runners” and “walkers” start rallying against “SHT” as soon as someone driving one runs down a jogger by accident. It’ll probably be classed as a motorized vehicle (since it is) and be banned on many of the trails/sidewalks in cities that its meant for. Thats my guess.
It will end up in the same legal position that the motorised skateboard is in the UK.
-The police regard it as a motorised vehicle.
-Therefore you can only use one on the road, not pavements or ‘sidewalk’.
-You must have a driver’s licence to drive one.
-And a minimum of third party insurance.
-Insurance companies will not insure one because they do not meet legal standards for motorised vehicles in issues like safety, number plates etc.
-Therefore you cannot get insurance for one.
-Therefore they are effectively ‘banned’ as you cannot legally use one on a public street.
Annoyed me, too. But Kamen gets part of the blame here - his own explanation includes stuff like “You think forward, you go forward.”. Of course what he MEANS is “You know instinctively know how to operate this vehicle because it responds to what you will naturally do when you want to go forward.”. He’s savvy enough to be snappy for the media, and they just parrot him.
I’ll bet he’s overselling that feature. I’m sure there will be people clutzy enough to defeat his ergonomic design. Not to mention people being creative and/or stupid. Which brings up the ugly specter of liability, lawyers and insurance. And licensing and restrictions.
I’ll be interested to see this thing when one of the “early adapters” gets one, but I’m not sure it’s any kind of major revolution in anything like its present form. To many practical problems, as other posters have already alluded to. If it IS a revolution, this is the Altair - the IBM PC is a few years away yet, and I’d lay money that it’s somebody other than Kamen that enjoys a commercial success, no matter how many patents he takes out.
Over here, it might work if it was relegated to the bicycle paths.
Which, to me (and apparently others in this thread), begs the question: What does it do that a bicycle doesn’t do cheaper and simpler, in a lighter package ? Not a whole lot, IMHO.
Well, you don’t have to move your legs and it has a smaller footprint. Good Things, both. OTOH, you can’t jump curbs or take it over your shoulder when there’s a staircase - or just a single step - to be overcome.
Hell, there might be good idea in there somewhere, but I don’t see it.
OK, before manny comes in to ask if there is still a General Question…I have a General Question or two.
I gathered from the “it has no engine” and “no brakes” comments that what it really used was an electric motor, with regenerative braking.
Yet - I’ve been looking at diagrams of it, and I can see no electric motor, nor batteries of any significant size. All I can see is motors that run gyroscopes. It certainly implies that the thing is motorized - but then, we have the “five cents a day” bit, which I sincerely doubt can move a person around all day even with a 100% efficient motor and battery in 65 lbm of machine.
Is it possible he’s just latched onto some hitherto unexplored aspect of the way gimbals and/or gyroscopes work? Like maybe he discovered you could put them under an axle, with a handle to steer the axle, and if you lean forward, the axle goes forward? So maybe it doesn’t work with extremely small people, like say a 6-year-old? That you’d have to be tall enough, and heavy enough, to make the “laws of physics” thing kick in?
So the only “motorized” part maybe is the motors to run the gyroscopes. The rest of it is just physics, like balancing on a bicycle? A bicycle is really just a kind of gyroscope, isn’t it? Factoid from 6th grade science class…
My impressions are similar to what others have expressed:
1: Overhyped- It’s probably not going to change the world, no matter how cool looking it’s still just a motorized scooter. The whole “it knows what you want it to do” crap is being presented like it has mind-reading sensors in the handlebars, and using 5 cents of electricity to move around a 150lb average American for a whole day seems really unlikely, unless the entire trip is downhill.
2: Expensive- $3000 for a transport system that as far as I could see has no storage space, no protection from the elements, and no crash protection?
From what the inventor was saying on GMA, they had gotten the NTSB to agree that it wasn’t a vehicle, so it would be allowed on sidewalks. That seems to me to raise its own safety issues. If these things can go 14mph, that makes for a head-on collision at almost 30 mph. Are we going to have sidewalk lanes in this revolutionary new world of transportation?
The 50 Yard Glide… The Wal-Mart Aisle Obstacle Course…