Segway Inventor Turns To Environment

MBCook writes "CNN has an article in which they talk about Dean Kamen's latest inventions designed to provide water to rural villages. His goal is also to provide electricity and opportunities for entrepreneurship. From the article: 'Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water,' says Kamen. 'The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.'"

Comments

Re:I was thinking about this the other day

[tinkerghost]

Nice idea but boiling water (100C/212F) won't kill most bacteria in 5 minutes.
Steralizing is usually done via steam at 2atm( 250-275F IIRC) for 15 minutes. Plus it doesn't remove contaminants. Mud + heat = dryer mud.
Most of the water purification systems use either an evaporation/condensation cycle or reverse osmosis through a semi-permiable membrane.
Of the 2, evap/cond is both more reliable and more scaleable. As a bonus, you can literally do it with 2 coconuts and a banana leaf.

Re:Rumors

[DavidTC]

Anyone making fun of his Segway does need to realize that, and yeah, his wheelchair was fucking brilliant. If you haven't seen it, it's a upright wheel-'chair'.

People in it are the same height as people who can walk (Thus, he says, elimating a lot of prejudice.) and can go over bumps and up and down stairs. It doesn't take up any more horizontal space than a fat person.

Think of it as a segway made into a wheeled mech suit for the lower half of your body. And I read somewhere that he planned to slim it down once it caught on, so it would be basically leg braces with wheels at the end. People might come up to you, and you wouldn't even notice their legs aren't moving.

And this isn't some pipe dream, these things actually work, balancing the same way as the segway, with two wheels on each side, so they can flip forward and move you up or down stairs. They're just too expensive right now. He was hoping to use the same parts as the segway to cut the cost down,but that didn't work out, obviously.