[spycatcher]

You can't tip over something with three (non-colinear) wheels, short of bodily lifting it off the ground.

Forgive me for having a little fun, but say, do you perchance live in a cave in Afghanistan? And might your security force drives our old three wheel ATV's? Well, here in the US they aren't sold anymore. Why? Because they tipped over and killed all their owners -- that's how you got yours.

"Our machines will rip the bones from your back, it's a deathtrap, a suicide rap, gotta get out while you're young, cause champs like us, baby we were born to bomb"

[discostu]

3 wheel ATC were the victims of lawyer. Like any off road vehicle it was put through some serious abuse by it's owner. The infamous tipping problem happened only in the even of jumping and landing incorrectly (front wheel first with wieght unbalance laterally). Which, if you'll look at his original post would pretty easily qualify for bodily picking it up. One of the other causes was hitting uneven terrain at too high a speed, the 4 wheel ATVs still have that problem though not as much because the two steering wheels makes it easier to drive yourself off of an over tilt. ATCs did not just tip over as you indicated, they tipped because of driver errors in handling terrain too quickly.

It's really a simple matter of physics, 3 points defines a plane and thus is the most stable way to attach an object to a plane. Obviously there's always some way to screw that up, but in your basic non abuse situation 3 points is the most stable. The problem with to points is forward/ backward momentum. Without the gyros for balance this thing would ALWAYS flip flop on the tourque plane (what battlebots, there's lots of two-wheeled killer in there, they never stay verticle without leaning on something, which is effectively what a gyro does). Which creates a problem in the event of low power.

One of the other problem with the Segway is the body position control. Sure it seems cool, no control surfaces to master a learning curve measured in seconds. But it only seems cool if you never walked around downtown Chicago during autumn. I've been hit by winds hard enough to tilt my body, and when I think of getting tilted by wind while on a device that will try to go in the direction my body is leaning I see trouble. Add crowded urban streets and buses to the mix and you've got dead Segway riders.

On another note this thing will be useless for the handicapped. Most people who have difficulties moving around the real problem is with supporting their weight while verticle. They can't handle standing in line any better than they can walking. This is a stand to operate vehicle, anybody that thinks it will improve the mobility of the handicapped is drunk.

Then there's the 65 pounds and major width. This is not a man portable vehicle. If you have any stairs to navigate you're SOL; how about opening a pull door, gonna be hard to grab the handle on your Segway, guess you could get off and drag the thing. Dragging it brings up an interesting question, what happens if you tilt it forward without being on it? That could get annoying as it surges ahead of you until you can't hold the handle then stops. And since it's wider than people you actually won't be able to fit as many of these on the sidewalks of America as you can people. And it's too wide to mingle with traffic on the roads like bicycles.

What we have here is some really cool technology used to make an incredibly lame device. And I realize that you're excited aboutthe tech, I'm excited about the tech, it's really cool. But you have to look at the big picture, how they put all this cool tech together is stupid and the thing is going to be useless. I'm glad one of the postal tests is in New Hampshire in January, nothing like a New England winter to test out a vehicle concept.