Flutterby™! : Segway for Christmas, Not. 2002-11-19 11:12:23+00

Segway for Christmas, Not.

2002-11-19 11:12:23+00 by meuon 4 comments

Amazon just e-mailed me that if I buy NOW ($5k) I can have a Segway in March 2003. 4 plus months away. Sorry Dean, the hype and shine has worn off, for $5k I can buy a nice used car and a bunch of parking tickets. I can buy 5-10 really nice bicycles and all the accessories, and go farther faster, especially on the local hills. On the other side.. in a couple of years, these things will be in pawn shops and will be fun to tinker with.

Yep. I'll be making all the noise I can politically to make sure that any local waivers for the Segway also apply to skaters, or that we push these out on to the roads where the bikes and motorized scooters already are. Just because John Doerr wants to defraud investors again doesn't mean we should be filling our sidewalks with vehicle traffic.

I am looking forward to lots of cheap gyros and high torque motors on the surplus market, though.

I suspect that Kamen's balance module will be a big profit center all by itself in coming years. Its use in industrial robots and other devices will be very interesting. Just off the top of my head, as part of a lightweight target tracking system in military vehicles over rough terrain.

Petronius, I'm not sure that there aren't already better targeting systems out there. More impressive for all-terrain vehicles would be something more like his wheelchairs, with 3 wheels arranged in a triangle on either side that can rotate to the next wheel set for larger obstacles. But even there the fact that the terrain happens in more than one axis complicate things.

With all the buzz recently, I spent a few moments thinking about how and if a Segway could help me with my commute. A bulky 65lb package would be inconvenient to get to and stow on the ferry. I'd have to use wheelchair access routes, and would have to lug it up a set of stairs on at least one of the boats if I put it where the bicycles lie for the ride. Unlike skates, it's too big to just carry with me.

I don't know how wide they are, so I don't know if I could get it in the downstairs door at work, which means another lugging up the stairs. And for the trip from the ferry building to home, 12 MPH just isn't fast enough. Just a standard $700 electric scooter that folds into a much more convenient to carry configuration wins hands down.

So did anyone catch the Segway comment on the Simpson's last night. During the news cast...