Monday, January 24, 2005 |
15:46 - Segway II
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/generaltech/article/0,20967,710982,00.html
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Dean Kamen's at it again.
What I’m staring at on the lawn is the outcome of this process of innovation: a Segway with four wheels. Seems like a pretty natural product-line extension. Field is the first to acknowledge that the Centaur has a tremendous amount of HT DNA—the entire base, stuffed with tilt sensors and gyroscopes that allow it to balance, is an HT. But, he adds, it was hardly as simple as adding two more wheels. The steering, for example, is part mechanical, part drive-by-wire. Two sensors in the steering column calculate speed (from the throttle) and angle of turn (from the handlebar) and send the data to computers in the base. Integrating that information with readings from the tilt sensors and gyros, control boards adjust the speed of the independent rear wheel motors 100 times a second to keep the machine upright.
Who'd buy one, though? Park rangers? We all know the tremendous impact they've had in making and breaking the pic-a-nic basket and blunderbuss industries in the past...
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