I'm still not sold on it's practicality though. The first thing I wonder is how it goes up and down hills. One can only wonder what happens to the Segway after cresting a steep hill.
And while it needs outside power for the balancing mechanism, apparently it changes some of the potential energy of a fall forward into kinetic energy..i.e., motion.
Wouldn't that imply the same principle could be applied to a stationary device to possibly generate power, close to a perpetual motion machine, with frictional losses being the limiting factor.
Of course in Segway a human reaction/reflex is part of the circuit, and aparently some potential energy is derived from that relationship. In other words you can't hang a weight at the end of a string and expect it to produce power/motion.
If you could, why not replace the weight with a spring or small, efficient engine to produce the input, then let Segway's gyro's crank generators.
All in all it looks like a clever device, something useful in a controlled environment like a factory, but NOT something that's going to be running around city streets. Could you imagine a bunch of skateboard dudes flying along on these things through a crowd?
In fact persopnally, as a skateboarder from back in the early 60's I'd rather hang ten.
prisoner6
I live on top of a small mountain - I thought about that and would be slightly concerned going down my steep hill on that thing.
Yes, it is an interesting concept, and I suppose it does use kinetic energy and perhaps even your own human energy (leans, pulls, squats, etc..) for motion. Top speed downhill is probably limited by the size of the gears, and yet I still don't know where the brakes are on it.
How do you think you will look riding it with a pair of Vans on your feet, dude?