Techdirt. Stories about "segway" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "segway"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 18 May 2011 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: These Robotic Exoskeletons Were Made For Walking... Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110204/15011212970/dailydirt-these-robotic-exoskeletons-were-made-walking.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110204/15011212970/dailydirt-these-robotic-exoskeletons-were-made-walking.shtml
  • A recent grad from UC Berkeley walked across a stage to get his diploma using a robot exoskeleton. The stripped-down exoskeleton cost about $15,000 -- down from $90,000+ versions that are on the market already. [url]
  • Eythor Bender demonstrates his robot exoskeleton work for a TedTalk. Military use for these exoskeletons would allow soldiers to carry around a lot more gear... [url]
  • The Walk Again Project aims to create brain-machine interfaces (BMI) in the form of neuroprosthetic devices that can control exoskeletal robots for mobility assistance to persons with severe paralysis. The brain implant technology sounds pretty ambitious -- and could be useful for a lot of other applications, too. [url]
  • Robot Suit HAL is another robot exoskeleton designed to interpret the wearer's intentions for movement and assist with those movements. Hopefully, it will also allow users named Dave to open the pod bay doors. [url]
  • To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  
    • By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110204/15011212970     Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Wearing Technology On Your Sleeve (Or In Your Brain) Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110120/18430612752/dailydirt-wearing-technology-your-sleeve-your-brain.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110120/18430612752/dailydirt-wearing-technology-your-sleeve-your-brain.shtml
  • BMW sponsored a bunch of "urban transportation concepts" for wearable personal transportation. But a lot of these designs look much less useful than a Segway. [url]
  • Really small supercapacitors grown on fibers could create a variety of textiles that could act like batteries. We probably won't be wearing batteries anytime soon, but flexible batteries might be useful. [url]
  • A paralyzed woman has learned to control a BrainGate implant and has used it as a computer input device for over 1,000 days. She can perform "point and click" actions with >90% accuracy. [url]
  • To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  
    • By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110120/18430612752     Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Looking To Improve Infrastructure Designs Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14000112657/dailydirt-looking-to-improve-infrastructure-designs.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/14000112657/dailydirt-looking-to-improve-infrastructure-designs.shtml
  • Driving without making any left turns could be safer AND more efficient. Just out of curiosity, I had to check to see if the author of this study was named Zoolander.... [url]
  • Cul-de-sacs are evil and slowly killing you. Ok, that's not exactly true, but neighborhoods with more interconnected streets generally have better walkability scores -- which correlate to lower body mass indexes. [url]
  • Next time you're waiting for a parking spot, here's a long paper on parking infrastructure to keep you busy. But it'll be somewhat irrelevant when most of the cars are electric or hybrids. [url]
  • Bike enthusiasts report that bike/pedestrian infrastructure construction projects create almost twice as many jobs (per million dollars spent) than regular road construction. Hmm. But I don't think "job creation" is a very good metric for construction projects. Digging holes and filling them back in could create a lot of jobs, too. [url]


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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110113/14000112657     Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Cool Vehicles That You Can't Drive Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110110/11245012592/dailydirt-cool-vehicles-that-you-cant-drive.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110110/11245012592/dailydirt-cool-vehicles-that-you-cant-drive.shtml
  • Hybrid air vehicles might look like Zeppelins, but they don't need special runways to land/takeoff. The US military has invested in them, apparently, but mainly as a surveillance ship. [url]
  • Some Australians broke a land speed record for a solar powered car -- 88 kph FTW. Neither 1.21 gigawatts nor a flux capacitor were required. [url]
  • If you're going to add a Segway mechanism to a car, this concept car looks like the way to do it. Make the two rear wheels into detachable personal motorbikes. [url]
  • There's a pretty big picture of almost all the different Batmobiles with wheels. Given that many changes, Batman's ride probably never lasted long enough for an oil change. [url]


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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110110/11245012592     Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:56:00 PST Segway Announces The Most Understated Merger Ever Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100114/1452127763.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100114/1452127763.shtml discussing its recent merger with a UK company. The company didn't even mention it for nearly a month, and only said something once rumors started spreading, and then the blog post they put up about it gives very little in the way of detail. They don't even mention the company's name:
    Segway Inc. is pleased to announce that in connection with a merger that occurred on December 24, 2009, Segway was acquired by a company that is based in the United Kingdom. The acquiring company is backed by Jimi Heselden, a prominent U.K. businessman and the Chairman of Hesco Bastion. Mr. Heselden is also an investor in the independently owned Segway U.K. distributorship.
    The company also got some funding (and lost its latest in a long, long, long line of CEOs), but in an interview with the local paper, Dean Kamen admits that he doesn't even know who the new investor is.

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    ]]>     so-yeah-we-were-acquired-by-somebody-some-time-ago http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100114/1452127763     Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:37:00 PDT Why Segway Failed To Reshape The World: Focused On Invention, Rather Than Innovation Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090730/1958335722.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090730/1958335722.shtml amazing that would change the world. If you were paying attention to tech news, you may recall it was everywhere. There was some book deal about it, and we were told that it was going to change the way cities were laid out and would absolutely revolutionize transportation. It had the blessing of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and John Doerr and was amazing. But no one knew what it was. Hell, it didn't even have a name. It was referred to either as IT or Ginger -- and there were all sorts of rumors about what IT might be. Eventually, of course, IT was revealed as the Segway. And while it was sorta kinda maybe cool, it hardly came close to living up to its original billing. It was expensive and not really all that useful for most people. Segway, the company, has gone through a merry-go-round of new CEOs and new strategies, none of which have gotten it out of a niche market.

    Recently, in talking about how the Netflix Prize helped demonstrate the value of openness and collaboration when it came to innovation, rather than hoarding and taking the "inventor-knows-best" attitude towards things, Mark Blafkin of the Association for Competitive Technology (a tech industry lobbying group who tends to be a patent system supporter) took exception to what we said about the value of openness and collaboration instead of focusing on patents, by noting that Dean Kamen has also put a lot of effort into collaboration and prizes to award innovation, but also is a strong believer in patents (and, actually, making them stronger).

    In response, I pointed out that Kamen's thinking on patents may actually explain part of the reason why Segway has struggled so much over the years. In believing so strongly in patents, it shows someone who tends to believe invention is more important than ongoing innovation, even as there's a growing body of evidence to suggest the exact opposite is true. Invention is the original idea, but innovation is an ongoing process of taking a product and adjusting and adapting it to the market. And we've been seeing more and more studies that note the innovation part is so much more important in determining the success and the economic contribution of a product.

    So it seems like perfect timing to see Paul Graham's recent essay about why the Segway failed to change the world. He focuses mainly on the fact that the Segway basically makes people look dorky -- and that a better design might have helped more people find it enticing. But at the end he notes:
    Curiously enough, what got Segway into this problem was that the company was itself a kind of Segway. It was too easy for them; they were too successful raising money. If they'd had to grow the company gradually, by iterating through several versions they sold to real users, they'd have learned pretty quickly that people looked stupid riding them. Instead they had enough to work in secret. They had focus groups aplenty, I'm sure, but they didn't have the people yelling insults out of cars. So they never realized they were zooming confidently down a blind alley.
    Exactly. Again, this highlights the difference between invention (believing that you alone have come up with the perfect idea for a great product) and innovation (the ongoing iterative process of going back and forth with the market to test and understand what the market wants and how to make your product meet their needs). By focusing so much on the invention, Segway missed the real opportunity for innovation, and that's caused all sorts of problems for the company.

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    ]]>     that-ain't-the-solution http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090730/1958335722     Tue, 7 Apr 2009 22:22:00 PDT Keep It Simple, Segway -- Don't Team Up With GM Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090407/1125044419.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090407/1125044419.shtml demonstrated a 2-wheeled vehicle they call PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility). It's basically a bigger Segway that's smaller than a car, but bigger than a scooter because it seats 2 people side-by-side. Having recently visited Saigon (and seen Top Gear's Vietnam Special), I find the technological achievement of the PUMA to be absolutely ridiculous considering the time-tested utility of a 2-wheeled motorcycle (which can easily transport 2 people and zoom through insane traffic at the same time). In fact, the PUMA Project symbolizes many of the failures of the American auto industry. Instead of taking existing technologies and innovating by adapting them to suit practical needs, the PUMA Project simply takes an existing product and makes it bigger, not necessarily better. Okay, obviously, the PUMA Project is just a prototype and not meant for real world usage. But perhaps the time to show off impractical concept vehicles is not during one of the worst global recessions?

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    ]]>     2-wheels-are-better-than-3-or-4 http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090407/1125044419     Mon, 7 Jul 2008 06:31:00 PDT Segway CTO Joins Apple As VP Of Product Design Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080707/0123541600.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080707/0123541600.shtml Jonathan Ive and Steve Jobs get much of the credit for the designs of products like the iPod, iMac and iPhone. Still, it's rather interesting to find out that the original CTO for the Segway is leaving Segway and joining Apple as its VP of Product Design. Coming from a Dean Kamen company is probably a pretty good background for thinking out of the box -- though, the Segway never was the mass market success story that was predicted. So who wants to start up rumors about the iScooter? Or the iCar?

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    ]]>     interesting-choices http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080707/0123541600     Thu, 9 Aug 2007 09:44:11 PDT Segway Enthusiasts Club Disbanding Over Lack Of Enthusiasm Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070808/195331.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070808/195331.shtml the Segway Enthusiasts Club of America is disbanding. Turns out that people really aren't that enthusiastic about Segways any more. The group is disbanding over lack of activity and the fact that no one wanted to be on its board. It's been well documented that the Segway never came anywhere close to living up to the hype, and over the years it's gone through one strategy after another as it seemed to have more executive changes than customer wins. However, having your "enthusiast" user group completely shut down is a pretty damning exclamation point on how low the Segway has sunk.

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    ]]>     so-sorry-about-that http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20070808/195331