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Honda's Answer To the Segway
lcreech writes with an excerpt from the Daily Mail's description of a new Segway-style one-person vehicle being shown off by Honda: "The vehicle looks like a very modern unicycle and to ride it you simply lean your weight in the direction you want to go, whether that's forward, backwards or even sideways. It maintains its own balance travelling up to 3.7MPH. Not very fast."
Lets be happy that we're probably the last generation that can watch how the beautiful girls walk on street in their red dresses and nice legs and ass. Sooner or later this will be reality, in a bad and a good way. While convenience is nice, it has bad sides too.
That being said, I would so use this. Can I get a comfortable computer chair version too, so I can get a beer easily (and one of those japanese beer serving machines please )
If you're intrepid enough to sit on a motorized unicycle, automated stabilizers aside, you're very likely able and willing to walk 4mph. So, it's no surprise they don't plan on bringing it to market.
However, nice proof of concept as a base for robots.
Damn those pesky terrorists
While in general this thing is completely pointless, the way the wheel itself works is really cool. It's composed of cylinders which form the ring for the main wheel but allow sideways movement. Leave it up to the Japanese to dream up the most useless application for advanced technology, but it's cool that they're exploring unconventional concepts.
Don't worry, I'm sure that when horses were first tamed someone bemoaned the loss of walking. I imagine the same thing happened when the carriage was invented, and the bicycle, and the automobile. Pretty girls will still walk, and when they don't they usually get fat, anyway.
Nothing to worry about in that respect.
Free Martian Whores!
That's hardly the same thing, although it may fit the description in the summary. If you watch the video, you'll see that the Honda vehicle allows the rider to glide around in any direction, kind of like a wheeled stool; the unicycle you're linking to only moves in one dimension (forward or back). It also doesn't maintain left/right balance at all.
It should go without saying that these three self-balancing vehicles—the Segway, the Honda vehicle, and your unicycle—are designed with significantly different applications in mind, despite sharing some similar technology. The Honda vehicle seems best-suited for maneuvering indoors, not as a replacement for your car/bike.
The girls who need to ride something around instead of walking reasonable distances don't stay beautiful for long.
Now, there's nothing quite like pretty girls in skirts riding bicycles.
Just read the comic B.C.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
If the bicycle were invented today, it would come with that label. We live in a society that is increasingly litigious and risk-averse. These both apply more for newer and higher-tech things - more so for commercial airplanes than cars, in spite of their relative risks.
People don't usually die in {bicycle,Segway,Honda thing} crashes, but they do sometimes, and for a new device, that's enough that its creators usually fear lawsuits without that label. These things might be a bit silly and overpriced, but they're not dangerous no matter what the stupid sticker says.
Rubber duckies have "RISK OF DEATH" labels on them now too. All thanks to kindly Nannie State.
Regulations force a climate of CYA to the point of crying wolf all day every day. A vehicle that travels at 3.7 miles an hour IS NOT DANGEROUS. AT ALL.