Your suggested "improvements" would result in less safety.
They'd be like training wheels on a motorcycle. You'd fall over the first time you tried to corner at more than 5 mph on such a motorbike.
This device relies on the forces that scare you. If you take measures to counter them, you'll be crippling it.
Actually I was refering to folks with problems similar to yours. People that technically can stand and walk but for whom it is quite painful or exhausting. A lot of folks in your position say the problem is with walking but if you check with the doctor you'll probably find out the real problem is with standing. Your body is no longer willing to hold you verticle.
Well, picture the same thing, but with either a seat, or a standing brace. Now you have a grocery store go cart that's higher tech. Also I'm not convinced Segway will handle that kind of drastic change in the center of gravity.
It will become the ultimate prosthetic. They'll be able to control it with subtle upper body movement. It would probably be possible to control it with nothing more than head movement.
I can see by this that you have a very emotional attachment to the possibilities Segway puts forth, and understandably so. And while I agree the technology in Segway is a stepping stone to your dream device I feel that the potential is in the underlying tech, how they used it is no help to people like you.
Imagine how your paralyzed friend would feel if he could walk next to you on a hike through the woods? Go fishing with you? Rabbit or pheasant hunting? Try that in a wheelchair!
The paralyzed person in question would have better luck trying to do these things in this guys previous invention (the stair climbing wheel chair) than in this.
Major width? Huh? It's a couple inches wider than the people who rode it on GMA.
Scope the picks again. There's close to a foot between the rider on the wheel on each side, and the wheel well is wide enough to put a fat briefcase on. As near as I can see these things come pretty close to 2 people wide.
It's probably narrower than me. :) As to the stairs, it has a "follow" mode.
Follow mode might help it get through doors, but it doesn't have the stuff (wheel exposure and ground torque) necessary to go up stairs, you're still going to have to lug it's 65 pounds up by hand.
It's not really that wide, and besides, it's designed for sidewalks, not roads.
The first step in America for the acceptance of people movers other than cars is to stick them on the road with the cars. Local safety officials aren't going to want these things on the sidewalk with unarmored people. I know he says it's like running into a person but that's bogus, normal people don't go 17 MPH and then this thing adds another 65 pounds of inertia. Places like NYC don't allow bikes, skateboard or even manual scooters to be ridden on the sidewalk, they won't allow these.
The rest of your worries mentioned in that paragraph are silly. It's like arguing against automobiles, because "what happens if granny closes her eyes and stomps on the gas?"
You might think they're silly. My life is QA and I think they're genuine, they might not be reasons in and of themselves to junk the device but they are part of a long list of reasons that when taken as a whole show it's just not that cool.
That's quite the indictment. Me, I'm kinda lame, and I could sure use one to help compensate for it. I'd spend a lot more time outdoors, rather than in front of my computer.
I have great sympathy, even greater because I have the type of knee and back problems now that will make me just as lame as yourself in another couple of decades. And as I said I can see you have a lot of hope for the potential of the device and it's quite understandable. And it's quite possible that because of my profession I am just as skewed to the bleak side of the picture as you are to the hopeful, but I just cannot see this device safely providing even half of your hopes for it.
What will you say if after the trial, everyone is grinning ear to ear, reporting incredibly higher productivity, beaucoup dollars saved (even when factoring in cost of vehicles), lower medical costs, etc?
I'll say I was wrong and you were right. I am wrong periodically. But I'm very careful to keep those occurances rare, one of the ways I keep them rare is to publicly take it on the chin when I'm wrong, that's an awful experience and one learns good ways (good being non-hypocritical, avoiding hypocrisy is very important in my life) to avoid repeating it. But I think it's going to be a major failure.
Will there be days when it can't be used due to drifting snow, ice, whatever? Sure. Does that mean it's worthless?
Might not mean it's worthless, but it does mean Kramen is full of crap. He's still saying this is the future of transportation and will eventually replace the car, at least for urban transportation. And if it can't handle the same weather conditions as the car then he's wrong.
This device is a "force multiplier". It lets one person do more than he could do without it. A mailman will be able to cover a route much larger than he covers on foot, and he'll be able to cover it in less time, with less wear and tear on his body. (Mail delivery folks tend to have unhappy joints, but happy orthopedists.)
Less wear and tear probably. More territory, probably not. The majority of time for a postal worker is spent at the box not in transit, and what transit there is is quite short, just single yard hops (which is why transit is such a short percentage of their time).
Your suggested "improvements" would result in less safety. They'd be like training wheels on a motorcycle. You'd fall over the first time you tried to corner at more than 5 mph on such a motorbike.
I disagree with both parts. 1, training/ safety wheels on linear wheeled things are there to keep you from banking, while it's true that banking is the way to handle high speed turns, over banking is a serious danger with linear wheeled devices especially for those new to it. What happens with safety wheels is you can't bank so you can't turn as sharply and thus you learn to take corners at a safe speed.
As for my changes you have to understand where I'm coming from. Goal one of those changes is to make the device cheaper. At $3000 per unit at a presumed rate of sales of almost half a million a year (factory capable of 40,000 units per month, with a second factory being built) these things are grossly over priced, the key to the pricing seems to be the gyros and complex computers that use them, so the way to make it cheaper is to make it not need them.
As for the safety aspect, yes my way is safer. By no being body position controled all the various things that make your body shift position (wind, satchels, hills, sneezing, you name it anything that makes your body change position could cause this thing to spiral out of control) stop being such a problem if it has normal control surfaces like the grocery store electric carts. Plus with the extra contact points the thing becomes harder to tilt and thus less likely to fall over.
This device relies on the forces that scare you. If you take measures to counter them, you'll be crippling it.
Which of course it what should happen. I think it's amazing that they figured out how to control a vehicle by the shifting of a persons weight. Really cool. Unfortunately in an open air vehicle that people are supposed to stand in while they operate, and one with no storage capacity so if the person is carrying things (like the postmen that will be testing it) they'll have to do so in a backpack or satchel, this mode of control goes from being nifty to being dangerous and stupid. Put this mode of control in something enclosed and with storage room and it's cool. But right now anything that makes the distribution of your body weight change on the vehicle (the list of which is very long because it has no coverage, no storage and you're supposed to stand on it) can change the direction the vehicle is moving in. I've lived in Chicago, I've driven through Texas Canyon here in Arizona during a wind storm (happens almost every time I come home from visiting the in-laws), I know how scary it is being buffeted by winds strong enough to move you under normal conditions, add to that a vehicle that's actually going to want to go in the direction of the wind because your weight shifted and it's supposed to follow your weight and you have a very dangerous device. I'm sorry that you can't see that but that's the fact of the matter whether you agree or not.