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Segway vs. Roomba
Jerry23 writes "We all knew it would happen. We just didn't know when. But Second Life's Cory Ondrejka has just blogged The Encounter: At last weekend's Accelerating Change Conference, Dean Kamen's demon seed, the Segway personal transporter, met Helen Greiner's lovechild, the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, in a climactic crash that will echo through the ages.
And I quote: "That night also had what was, for me, the highlight of the conference. I refer, of course, to the ultimate convergence of technology. The perfect connection of human and robot. The consumate collision of 21st century geek products. I am referring, of course, to the moment that a Segway ran over Roomba."
"
"Yes, some people had problems, but for the most part this fairly unnatural motion on an inverted pendulum went smoothly."
Yeah, problems. Like the demonstrator I saw take a violent Segway header at the Minnesota State Fair last year. While he's giving his pitch, one of the wheels on his Segway hit a tiny patch of water on the slick floor. The wheel spun and smoked like a funny car doing a burn-out, and the guy went down so hard that his head bounced about six inches off of the floor. Next day he was back, with a cast on one arm, and a hockey helmet on his head.
Yeah, the inverted pendulum is a cute trick, but then again, so is riding a unicycle. I wouldn't advise my grandmother to ride either one. On the other hand, I would give her a Roomba. I own one, and apart from driving my pet beagle completely ballistic, it's great.
About the word "if": If bullfrogs had wings, they wouldn't bounce around on their little green butts.
why not combine them into a rideable vaccum for large offices ; )
"Gaines and Harvey mounted tumble-bugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain, some twenty-five yards behind the leaing wave. It had been a long time since the Chief Engineer had ridden one of these silly-looking little vehicles, and he felt awkward. A tumble-bug does not give a man dignity, since it is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized on a single wheel. But it is perfectly adapted to patrolling the maze of machinery 'down inside', since it can go through an opening the width of a man's shoulders, is easily contrlled, and will stand patiently upright, waiting, should its rider dismount."
-"The Roads Must Roll", from The Man Who Sold the Moon, circa 1950
Heinlein invented the Segway!
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
How long untill we see a rollerball type game with polo players riding segways trying to knock a ball into a basket on top of a moveing roomba?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I was standing about three feet away when the segway ran over the roomba. It was indeed a great testimony to the hardiness of both machines. You could probably make a great game out of it; release a couple of speedy roombas and see how many you can run over in a given time limit.
What I actually found more interesting though, was the number of times people fell off the segways. I've been to a few conferences before where people were taking turns on a segway, and I'd never seen anyone fall off. In about 30 minutes of watching the segway riders at ACC 2004 people fell off at least two dozen times and ran into immobile objects just as much. Also people kept overcompensating when trying to get on it for the first time and were thrown into this violent thrashing mode where they'd feel like they were falling forward so they'd rapidly lean back, causing the segway to pull back and then they'd feel like they were falling back so they'd rapidly lean forward, etc. One guy got into this mode after zipping around waaay too fast and was slammed face first into the carpet -really hard-. Looked like a snowboarder digging an edge in.
My theory on this was that at all the other conferences there was only one segway, but at this one there were two. Somehow the presence of another segway rider was causing people to push themselves too far too fast instead of easing into it.
They are fun to ride though, even if you do look like a dork doing it.
I have a cat and one of the newer "Discovery" models. I don't have the bearings-sieze problem, I read that the design changed to avoid this problem. Works great, don't know what I'd do without it.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Never having seen one IRL, can some of you folks from across the pond tell me who are using the segway and for what? Is it private individuals or companies buying them, and for leisure or work?
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Not true. It uses human power, which is provided by the calories you eat, which come from meat and grain raised on commercial farms. A tremendous amount of energy is used in the production of that meat and grain (much more energy than you actually gain by eating it). Imagine all the tractors and processing plants. Think about the farm and factory employees, who commute to work by car.
I admit I haven't run the numbers, but I'd wager that an electrical device is always a more efficient use of fossil fuel energy than the extremely complicated energy flow of human power.