Japanese Engineer Develops 'WalkCar,' a Mini-Segway

rtoz writes: A Japanese engineer has developed a portable transporter small enough to be carried in a backpack that he says is the world's first 'car in a bag'. The lithium battery-powered "WalkCar" device is the size of a laptop and resembles a skateboard more than a car. According to the Reuters report, the slender WalkCar is made from aluminum and weighs between two and three kilograms , depending on whether it is an indoor or outdoor version. The aluminum board and can take loads of up to 120kg., and it reaches top speeds of 10 kilometers per hour, for distances of up to 12 kilometers after three hours of charging. When a rider stands on it, the WalkCar starts automatically, while simply stepping off stops the vehicle. To change direction, the user just shifts their weight.

Comments

Neat

[Otome]

Looks like fun but 12km really isn't very far, especially if you want to ride it to your destination and back, in which case you can only go places up to 6km away.

Re:Neat

[TWX]

Honestly, if the point is to somewhat replace walking then this isn't that bad of a range. Convert to miles and round-down, that's a range of about three and a half miles one-way. I live in fairly low-density suburbia and within that range are dozens of strip-malls and corner commercial properties, several doctors' and dentists' offices, probably a dozen grocery stores ranging from Whole Foods at the high-end to a low-end Food City at the bottom end, plus movie theatres, restaurants of all varieties, and the primary and secondary schools for which my home is districted. I may not use one as my commute is farther than this thing's range and I tend to do a lot of my shopping on my way home, but for someone living in the neighborhood that isn't going very far and doesn't need to take a whole lot with them something like this might actually work, especially if parking is routinely a headache at the destination.

What I didn't see in the video was how stepping on to it starts it moving. They cut right as he starts to step-on at the beginning. That initial kick from being still to moving is probably one of the riskier parts of using this, I want to see how someone older or someone a little less sure-footed handles it. I also want to see more varied terrain, like transitioning between sidewalks and crosswalks down sloped curbs and over those bump patterns for the blind.

What is the point?

[Carewolf]

So it is even more useless than a SegWay which are already useless. Who needs something that can move short distances at walking speed, but can be carried around when walking? Either you can walk or you can't, if you can walk it is useless, if you can, it is also useless.

Re:What is the point?

[barc0001]

So, you commonly walk at 10 kph? Your legs must be ripped as hell....

Re:What is the point?

[Todd Palin]

While I agree that this thing is almost useless, I have to disagree with one thing. I can walk pretty fast, but can't sustain anything over 6k/h without looking like an idiot. This device claims 10k/h. So, I'd have to say it might be useful if you need to make time in a walking environment. I'm sure you can imagine a situation where 10k/h is better than 6k/h.

Re:What is the point?

[Applehu Akbar]

This is much more useful than a Segway because when you step off, you can easily carry it, say up a flight of stairs and through the chikatetsu system (This is Japan we're talking about) carrying it in a little bag like a laptop. Later, it can be used to zip past that long boring stretch of roadside. Then you pick it up and duck into a Lawson's to do some shopping.

Stateside, you can step out of your Escalade at the mall, zip through that drab parking lot, while holding it up to deflect bullets if the need arises. Just try any of those things, in either country, with a Segway.

Re:What is the point?

[xlsior]

Who needs something that can move short distances at walking speed, but can be carried around when walking?

Some people with medical issues like arthritis can find if much less stressful on their joints to just 'stand' rather than actually walk... Chronic joint inflammation that gets made worse by the repetitive stress of walking. Just because someone is capable of walking doesn't necessarily mean that comes always easy to them. For example: With arthritis, you can be perfectly fine walking around at one moment, with excruciating pain in your joints the next. Any further ongoing joint movements at that point increases or prolongs that pain. A personal transporter that can keep you from rotating your ankle or hip joints unnecessarily can make a huge difference, both in pain control and personal independence.

Also, it could be useful if you have a morning commute by public transportation -- you still need to get TO the train/subway/bus station after all, and from the last stop to your final destination. This is something that can take you the first and last parts of your trip, while easily carried on board of the bus in a bag without taking up a ton of room.

Re: What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I commonly walk at that pace with no effort. Of course I'm European and a member of the Aryan Herrenvolk, not a subhuman american, a filthy mixture of negroid and latin blood ruled by jews.

Donald Trump.. is that you?

Re:What is the point?

[westlake]

Some people with medical issues like arthritis can find if much less stressful on their joints to just 'stand' rather than actually walk...

But you still need to maintain your balance on this thing

If you have mobility issues, how do you make turns, speed up or slow down, how do you start and stop it, how do you get on and off safely?

Re:What is the point?

[Applehu Akbar]

You need to envision what a commute is like in transit-intensive Japan. You go everywhere on trains, but there's a "last kilometer" problem in needing to walk between your home and a station, and then from the station to your office. In Tokyo, where the next guy on the train is pressed against you holding a newspaper folded to the size of a handkerchief over your head, there's no room for a folding bike. People carry nothing larger than a briefcase or a laptop. A folding bike is no more portable in this context than a steamer trunk.

If you live out in the country, you can take a bike to the station. Not a folding bike, a regular one, because you leave it at the station during the day. You see thousands of them at rural stops like Ozaku or Kawagoe, all unlocked.

But in the city, the cheapest apartments and small businesses are packed into a dense cube around each transit station. If you live in a good neighborhood, your high-rise condo ("manshon" will be a couple of kilometers away from the station, by a spidery network of streets that in some cases are narrow enough that an American can stretch out his arms and touch the walls on each side. Your WalkCar would come in really handy on this part of your commute, and you can carry it to the office. If you work in a neighborhood where the streets are not too crowded, you can ride it at that end also.

Re:What is the point?

[Cinnamon Beige]

Mr. Blart has a different use case. He gets on a Segway at the beginning of his shift, and never has occasion to step off except to pause at the food court for more cheese and nachos. Having him use the Segway for these activities protects the mall customers from unsightly waddling.

At the same time, I have seen precisely one Segway in use in the wild, other than for tours, since the day it was introduced. It was about five years ago on the Las Vegas Strip. The Japanese invention strikes me as being a lot more useful.

I've seen one less than a year ago, being used by a cop (actual cop, not mall cop) who was doing a 'foot' patrol at an open-air mall. On the other hand, I was in a city where I've seen cops using such a wide variety of vehicles that I'd not bat an eye at moped cops or unicycle cops.

From what I could tell, it was because it was actually pretty efficient given the area the cop was being expected to cover--it was too large for it to be reasonable to do it entirely on foot, and the traffic was such that on foot would work better than attempting a patrol car, and the reason they had a cop there was because that mall had that lovely combination of a lot of intersections & pedestrian crossings that assumed drivers coming up on the non-blind direction were paying attention and a lot of drivers who, well, weren't.

That said, having lived in Tokyo, yeah, this looks a lot more useful overall--though I'd have used something like this more for when I was having to switch between the lines run by Tokyo Metro and JR East, since that tended to involve the occasional mad dash, as they counted as interchanges what in reality meant going from one station to another (such as between Meiji-Jingmae and Harajuku stations, or Shibuya and Edisu stations) in order to actually make the transfer. The Lawson was only a short half-block away.

It's a MacBook with wheels

[Jeremi]

Apple laptops are already pretty much an aluminum case filled with lithium ion batteries, they might as well add wheels to one and ride it to and from the Starbucks.

Blobligatory

[Hognoxious]

The aluminum board and can take loads of up to 120kg

A frame to couple two together is in development for the American market.

Useless where I live.

[mark-t]

Just like the Segway.... can't be used on any public sidewalks, bicycle paths, or roads, and on private property with public access, such as a shopping centre, can only be used with the owner's permission, which most do not give (although some do). Every few weeks or so I might see a person using one, and one time, I even witnessed what appeared to be someone getting fined for using one downtown on the public sidewalk (at least that's what it looked like to me from where I was watching, I wasn't anywhere nearly close enough to hear the actual exchange, but it did look like he was getting a ticket for using the device).

And it's not even that there are any laws explicitly prohibiting the Segway have been made here, it's that the Segway, being motorized, falls under a particular "vehicle" classification intended for use in areas to be shared with pedestrians, and although motorized wheelchairs have a similar classification, there is an explicit exemption for such devices on account that their primary purpose is to provide mobility for the disabled. The Segway, in addition to any similar styles of powered transport, have no such exemption, and so they are prohibited.

Don't be ridiculous!

[tlambert]

Looks like fun but 12km really isn't very far, especially if you want to ride it to your destination and back, in which case you can only go places up to 6km away.

Don't be ridiculous! 12K is enough for anyone!

Re:Don't be ridiculous!

[aynoknman]

Looks like fun but 12km really isn't very far, especially if you want to ride it to your destination and back, in which case you can only go places up to 6km away.

Don't be ridiculous! 12K is enough for anyone!

Bill Gates insisted that 640K was enough for anyone and that decision life hard for everyone for years.

Posted from my HP calculator...

[tlambert]

Posted from my HP calculator...

Bill Gates insisted that 640K was enough for anyone and that decision
life hard for everyone for years.
Made