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Remember that SLINKY toy that looked like a big flimsy spring and would "walk" down stairs? Think of adding gyros to one of them and replacing the gravity created by going down stairs by the gravity force created when you are falling over.

A person falling over creates a lot of force. Have you ever tried to catch a person falling over?

The gyros won't permit the person to fall, therefore that force has to be directed somewhere and apparently it is directed toward forward(or backward) motion revolution of the wheels.

Fat people moght be able to go faster than thin people.

It could become a new Olympic event.

Remember that SLINKY toy that looked like a big flimsy spring and would "walk" down stairs?

You can roll a ball down the stairs, with the smallest of pushes. With the same push, can you get it to roll UPSTAIRS??? OK, one more time, tell me again how you get the wheels to move simply by leaning forward, with, as some have claimed in this post, NO MOTORS??? You are telling me that by leaning forward, without motors, you are going to 'drive' this thing UPHILL??? Again, the TIME pictorial of this device shows two MOTORS for each wheel. See the link at the top of the post.

A person falling over creates a lot of force. Have you ever tried to catch a person falling over?

The gyros won't permit the person to fall, therefore that force has to be directed somewhere and apparently it is directed toward forward(or backward) motion revolution of the wheels.

Yes, but... there is only so much energy you can get out of a human body falling over... this is NOT some kind of perpetual motion machine.

In fact, I can tell you almost exactly how much energy you can get. The formula for potential energy is E=mgh where m is mass, h is height, and g is the gravitational constant 9.8 m*s^2. h in this case is the height of your center of mass (about bellybutton level) and m is your body mass

Assuming for a large man: mass=100kg and h=1 meter, then the potential energy is 980 joules. This is about 0.00027244 kilowatt-hours. If the electric motor in the device uses 100 W of power, i.e. the same as a bright light bulb, then this is enough energy to run it for about 10 seconds.

No matter what Kamen has invented, we can be sure he has not found a way to get more energy than this out of the force of one's falling over, unless every physicist from Newton until now has been wrong.

-ccm

Fat people might be able to go faster than thin people.

You make a good observation. Higher weight doesn't just increase momentum, it increases speed. Now that's contrary to almost all conventional "motorized" movement. That is, when weight increases friction/gravitational effect increases and that friction/gravity is where the energy is applied/wasted.