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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."
"
I wish I had this much time on my hands :-). These people are crazy nut jobs! I love it!
Segway wins, Roomba loses, owner of segway still doesn't get laid.
"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.
According to the blog, it was an accidental collision. I wanted wanton mayhem! The Segway with James Bond-esque spikes on its hubcaps. The Roomba spitting out dustballs with razors embedded.
Weak! Call me when they get the Roomba to vacuum up some gasoline and *then* battle. That'll be a fight for the ages.
why not combine them into a rideable vaccum for large offices ; )
Does anyone actually have one of those things? It doesn't look like it holds enough or has enough suction power to be of any practical use. It seems to be a conversation piece and not a practical vacuum cleaner.
While the article is somewhat interesting, the title is misleading. I expected someone to have done a Battlebots style bout between a Segway and a Roomba. Instead, all that happended was that someone riding a Segway ran over a Roomba that was going across the floor. Maybe if there'd been a video of this it'd be worth a 'funny' story entry...
Darn, I was under the impression that someone had invented some kind of riding vacuum cleaner with a built in navigation system.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
"Spent the weekend at a fascinating conference - Accelerating Change 2004 ...
... A Roomba was busy cleaning one of the meeting rooms, so it was interesting to actually observe one up close...
... there were two Segways available to the conference participants ...
There were some spectacular collisions, but none topped the moment that a fast moving Segway, slightly out of control, met Roomba, zipping across the floor like a suicidal squirrel. Amazingly, neither seemed the worse for the wear. The Segway popped up and over while Roomba emitted a few beeps from button presses but both continued on their way. Impressive engineering on several levels, actually. Roomba, for surviving the impact
unharmed and Segway for not tipping over."
Saves you from reading the articleI'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
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It's running kind of slow, here's the text in case of ./ing:
Segway v. Roomba
Spent the weekend at a fascinating conference - Accelerating Change 2004. For those who haven't heard of it before, the Institute for the Study of Accelerating Change is an educational nonprofit base in LA that focuses on creating an "informed, optimistic, and empowered world community." The tautological nature of that mission might give you pause, but after meeting the volunteers, speakers, and participants, you come away with the realization that this is a group of very technologically minded folks who are want to make the world a better place.
So, the Linden Lab folks got along with them famously!
With Dr. James Cook at the controls, we did an extensive demo at the Friday night Tech Night and had hours of great questions about Second Life and the community from the many attendees.
On Saturday, I gave the first of two virtual world keynotes, focusing on the inevitable shift of production and community into digital worlds, and Robin spoke on Virtual Learning and Community with the Themis Group's Nova Barlow. Forterra's Robert Gehorsam was supposed to attend as well, but did not. Second Life was the subject of many discussions throughout the day.
Many of the other presentations either directly or indirectly applied to Second Life. iRobot's Helen Greiner is an always interesting speaker and the success of Roomba is a great example of smart geeks proving the rest of the world wrong. A Roomba was busy cleaning one of the meeting rooms, so it was interesting to actually observe one up close. In many ways, it behaves almost exactly the way simple creatures in SL do and probably uses many of the same algorithms. It tended to get a little confused if it encountered lots of power cables and tried to eat my backpack -- succeeding in swallowing most of one of the straps -- but didn't seem at all evil. More on Roomba in a momement. Helen also talked about the next steps for iRobot, including small, autonomous, networked robots used to explore spaces. This was pretty cool, so during the next talk I popped into SL via WiFi and built a small room, bought some appliances for it, and then coded up some small explorer bots to move around in it. Bits are so much easier than atoms! Not an accurate simulation, but amusing, and a screen shot ended up in my slide deck.
David Brin spoke several times on Saturday, first by himself, where he had fun poking holes in bad science. Next, he was in discussion with the EFF's Brad Templeton about The Transparent Society -- the idea, not the book, although David mentioned his website enough times that his talk sometimes felt like a commercial. I'm sympathetic to Brad's position, but I worry that most of David's arguments about the direction we are headed are hard to argue with. Second Life offers an interesting place to learn about how societies form when ubiquitous surveillance is possible but social norms are used to enable privacy anyway.
Dan Gillmor gave a great talk related to his new book, We the Media. Clearly, he and Hamlet could have a fascinating discussion about the nature of journalism and bloging in digital worlds.
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.
Since Segway was one of the sponsors, there were two Segways available to the conference participants Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was pretty amazing to watch, because when they worked perfectly, they were stunning. Spry old ladies leapt aboard and were soon zipping about, completely confident in their driving, only to be knocked to the floor when they dismounted while holding the turn control. There were some spectacular collisions, but none topped the moment that a fast moving Segway, slightly o
"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.
Everybody knows the Segway. It is the most overhyped scooter that the world has ever seen. It all started with a claim that the device would revolutionize the way we build cities. At first it was called only "it". Then later it had its named changed to Segway, when the world was finally told about what it was: a scooter and a really expensive scooter at that!
So over the years, various shameless websites have astroturfed for the Segway - slashdot being one of them.
To make a long story short, slashdot hasn't really astroturfed for the Roomba, and thank god! I have owned a Roomba for over a year. The telling thing is that I have only used it for about a total of 3 months. See, the Roomba has one serious problem: it likes to malfunction. I take care of it, clean it, etc... but the god damn over priced piece of crap breaks down all the time. I have it on its second RMA so far, and iRobot likes to take their damn time replacing their shoddy products.
To make a long story short, avoid the Roomba until it sees a few more iterations and improvements: especially improvements to reliability. Also, it is probably a good idea to avoid the Segway too, considering that you can get an electric scooter for far less than a Segway costs, and anything that needs to be hyped and astroturfed as much as the Segway... probably has no true merit.
Segway Vs. Roomba
.
Screenplay by Peter Hutnick
INT. CAVE - NIGHT
A ROOMBA crouches over the remains of an expensive persian rug. It
hears a CLUNK and looks up.
CUT TO:
EXT. CAVE - NIGHT
A SEGWAY drops to the ground from it's ship with a CLUNK. It surveys
the mouth of the cave . .
-Peter
The death-match comes later with the lawyerbots in cybercourt. Judge WOPR presiding.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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); }
But not by much. They had one at the Tech Museum (downtown San Jose) that they would let you try out for a minute or two. There really isn't that much to it. The docent explained the concept in about 20 words and away I went.
The day that I was there the place was empty and I got to ride it for a good bit. Controlling it is surprisingly intuitive: lean forward to go forward, lean back to slow (or reverse) and a twist handle to turn. I ran it around in circles and between obstacles (they had cones set up) and basically in the couple of minutes I was on it, I had it mostly down. Getting on and off are the only tricky parts.
They're pretty cool, but I don't think in my case the "need" for one matches the cost.
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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 just found an upgrade to the Roomba. It costs about 1/100 as much, never breaks down, is environmentally friendly, usually lasts for many years, uses no power, and provides exercise:
Witness: THE BROOM!
I don't respond to AC's.
with huge spoilers and skirt kits.
I want 3!
I had heard GWB is pretty athletic, and I also heard that he had crashed a Segway, but those photos suggest he made a pretty graceful recovery. No, he didn't plant the landing like an Olympic gymnast, but he lands on his feet in a stance used in most contact sports.
What? Not pictures? No video?
The least you could to is recreate the incident... I'll volunteer my Grandma to ride the Segway. Ever since her eyesight went bad and her reflexes went south, she's cut her driving back to only 30 miles a day.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
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.
We have a robotic vacuum that, by all reviews, doesn't clean worth a damn versus a transport device that achieves a fast walk pace for a limited distance at a cost of several thousand dollars.
My guess is that the stories behind the devices is more interesting than the devices themselves.
My friend emailed me yesterday, he said I could have a Segway for a one month demo if I came to meet him in Union Square where the CityStreets people were showing them.
I was excited at first, but I couldn't figure out how I was going to get it home. Then I realized I may have to drive it home and it suddenly was not that exciting of an offer. I just wanted to crash it into the walls of my apartment for a month, not actually ride it in public.
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
I want to see two knights in armour with lances go at
eachother on the field of mortal combat, on segways.
(sorry, must've been something I ate...)