Subject:
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Re: A new way for geeks to move around
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Wed, 5 Dec 2001 02:44:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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1859 times
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>
>
> The Segway doesn't operate simply by leaning or "thinking" about moving in a
> particular direction, it requires manual steering with the handlebars. Kamen
> has said that it will displace the automobile, but the device is really more
> geared towards replacing walking (probably more so for those who can't walk
> on their own for some reason), or neither the automobile nor walking (and
those who cannot walk on their own could probably not stand on the thing
either :(
> therefore fails to find a truly needful market). Ease of use is probably
> mitigated to an enormous degree by the Segway's own weight of 65-80 lbs.
> The official website animation shows a woman at the top of a cement
> staircase holding the thing with one hand and a backpack in the other, I
> guess she's going to "bump" this thing down her front stairway to the
> sidewalk. I have the funny idea this thing cannot take that kind of abuse
> long-term, not with all of it's sensitive directional monitoring gear. No
> mention is made of the device climbing the steeper hills of places like San
the cnn footage showed it climbing speed bump sized ramps without a
hitch, but now i wonder, what's its battery life?
> Francisco, or of the devices use over ice and snow. It was suggested at
> first that the thing was incapable of falling over, but CNN words it much
> more carefully by stating "...the scooter is difficult to fall from or knock
> over..." No mention is made of hitting another pedestrian at 12-17 miles an
> hour on "level ground."
>
> Time has an article at
> http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,186660-4,00.html that
> states: "No matter how inherently safe Segways may be, someone, somewhere is
> going to kill himself on one."
indeed.
> Inventor Kamen probably just wanted to come up with some reason to justify
> the invention of the balancing mechanism, sadly this scooter leaves him
> looking like a deluded nut. To be fair, I am not sure to what degree he is
> himself responsible for the hype surrounding his 'ginger," but he should at
> least bear some responsibility for not cutting-off some of the more absurd
> hype at a more incipient stage. Instead, I guess he just let different
> investors and journalists pump him full of money for a piece of the action.
> Obviously, he has more than his fair share of the P.T. Barnum gene.
From what I understood, the original design was to somehow include a
wonderous new super efficient gas engine - I can't recall where i
heard/read this however... and apparently, the thing runs on batteries -
guess you can't save more gas than that. But from what I understood -
that was the reason for all the delays...
it also could have been a hallucination, who knows.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: A new way for geeks to move around
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| (...) (URL) am interested in the future applications of the self-balancing mechanism used by the Segway, but the scooter itself is a product that few will buy. This newfangled scooter is not more important than the internet nor is likely to have (...) (25 years ago, 5-Dec-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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