TechStuff Classic: How Segways Work

completely different. Um, I would argue that that didn't happen, but we probably saw them pave the way, for lack of a better word, for the e scooter revolution that started around. But let's sit back and listen to this classic episode. Lauren, you pointed out to me that we actually we as in tech stuff recorded in an episode about Dean Cayman, who is the founder of Segue a long long time ago, a very long time agoack in two thousand eight. Yeah, well, he's done a whole bunch

of other really cool stuff. Yeah. He invented a thing called a Luke arm, which is a robotic arm that for people who have lost a limb. Yeah, we talked a little bit. I bet about that in a whole other podcast thing we're doing. Yeah, over and Forward Thinking. It's great show, you guys. If you haven't checked out

Forward Thinking, you should definitely check it out. It's great stuff. Uh. He also invented a water purification device called the sling Shot, which can take pretty much anything that has water content in it and purify it into drinkable water. So you can take sewage and put it through this thing and it would actually produce clean, drinkable water and it's meant for communities that have uh, you know, have trouble accessing clean water. Fantastic thing. He's partnered with some pretty big

companies for that. But the segue, I think is where a lot of people no Dean Cayman like they they heard about it that because of the segue, well it got. It got a great deal of publicity, which we will talk about later in the episode. Because it was the hype for it is can really only be called hype. It was very intent. It was it was like it was like if you had heard that this rock and roll band that had not released an album in like ten years was getting back together to do their first

studio album. Uh, and that you know in a decade, and that would that would be kind of similar to the hype build up that not only were they going to do an album, but they were going to revolutionize the entire music industry with this album. That's that's the level. Yeah, that's fair. So we'll talk about that in a bit, but first we wanted to kind of talk about actually

what it was and how it worked. So if you were to look at one of these things, in case you have not seen it, it looks like a little two wheeled scooter, but the wheels are are side by side. They're not in line with one another. Their side by side. And when you would stand on a platform with the left wheel to your left and the right wheel to your right, there's a bar that comes straight up vertically

from the platform. Their handlebars handle bars that you hold onto and then when you when you lean, it moves. When you lean forward, it starts to move forward. When you lean backward, it stops. If you lean back enough, it'll go backward a little bit. But it's um and uh and and the new models these days, when you tilt the handlebars, that is how you steer. Yeah, and the original one, you would twist one of the handlebars

the right handlebars, so rapping a motorcycle style exactly. And if you if you twisted, if you twisted one way, it would turn left, and you twist the other way, it turns right. And the way it turns is kind of cool. Uh. When you lean forward, both wheels engage and start moving forward simultaneously. Correct. When you turn, only one wheel starts to move in one direction and the other wheel allows you to pivot on on a dine right right. Yeah, it's a turning radius of zero zero

turning radius, which is pretty amazing. And Uh, we'll talk about what he intend did this device to do in the second half, I think, but first we wanted to kind of talk about the actual technology that makes this possible. And Dean came in. Before he had gone into developing the Segway, had already started to work on some pretty

cool systems. He did some work on motorized wheelchairs that were capable of doing things like climbing up staircases, and that work kind of led him to the idea of what if I created a device that could transport people at a good clip, uh, and make it so that it it works on the same principle as what it's like when you're walking. So when you're walk yeah, exactly, it works in a way that feels natural to us. Although I will tell you the first time you get

on a segway, nothing feels natural about it. I haven't actually been on one. You have, I have, I've done. I've been on a segway. I really enjoyed it. I had a great time. But have you ever engaged in an activity where the first step requires you to do something that feels totally unnatural to you, so that there's like your body is actually resisting what you have to do.

But basically that's me walking every day. But I mean, but for for example, when I switched from a W A S D keyboard uh First Person Shooters to Xbox controller, I was like, what is this? See? For me, what I think of is like the first time when I was a little kid that I ever tried snorkeling. Because I put my face in the water and my body is telling me, for goodness sakes, man, whatever you do,

don't breathe. Then you're underwater, and you know, my my breast of my brain is saying, foolish, scary, reptile brain, that's not anything to worry about. You have a tube, but to the air, which is unobstructed, you can breathe all you like. And it took that leaped not literally did literally leap, but no, yeah, I couldn't get enough traction, but it took that mental to get to a point

where I felt comfortable. Same sort of thing on a segue, because the way it works is that you start to lean forward as if you're going to take a step, because basically what walking is is controlled falling. Right Yeah, You're you're you're throwing the upper part of your body forward. You're you're essentially unbalancing yourself and then counting on one leg or the other hypothetically to catch it. Right, Yeah,

you just you're constantly catching yourself with your legs. You're you know, especially if you're if you're walking at a good pace, you know, you'll see people they're leaning into it and uh and that weight is what's helping them propel forward. And then they swing a leg out, which catches them, stops them from falling, and they use that leg to push them forward, and then the other leg and so on and so forth. And it's something that we once we start to learn how to walk. It

just becomes natural to us. We don't even think about it, right, right, Well, we've got all kinds of a really really intricate inner ear sensory mechanisms to tell us when we're balanced and when we're off balanced, and how everything is going. It's a really it's such an automatic process that when you're not too you're not thinking about it. Yeah. And what's also funny is that that that same system of sensors that we have in our brain. Well, two things are funny.

One thing is that a lot of that informed Dean Cayman when he was designing the segue. He wanted to have a mechanical means to sort of recreate that. And the other thing is that these sensors are not fails there,

they're they're not foolproof. We we can fool ourselves. Uh. This is partially what leads us to things like motion sickness, where we get one set of input from a set of senses telling us one thing, and a different set of input from other senses telling us another thing, and that that conflict makes our brain say, Okay, if that's how you're gonna play it, we're losing lunch. That's it. Uh, someone who has suffered from from car sickness, motion sickness

that way. Strangely enough, never got sea sick, but I've been motion sick from a car before. But anyway, so the the they are fallible, these systems in our our brains and in the segway. As it turns out, So Dean came and wanted to create the segue in such a way that it would require you to lean forward as if you were going to take a step, and that would be the indicator to move right and then

and then sort of trust the machine. I imagine that that's where you have your initial problem, because you're you're you're leaning forward and you're not catching yourself. Yeah, and you know you've already been told, You've already been told, do not take your foot off the platform to step and catch yourself, because then you run yourself over. So not only do you not wearing a helmet at the time hypothetically, yes, I was wearing a helmet at the time.

That was that was that was a requirement. I want to say that I was at Disney when I did this. It was at some park and I think it was Disney, and it was it was not the full epp Cut tour, which we can talk about. I've got a little factoid on that. Uh, there is a tour that very popular tour at Epcot that use as segways. It wasn't that, it was just a little like familiarize yourself with this technology thing, and I was like, I've always wanted to

do this, and that's when I tried it. So I've only done at the one time, and I really would love to have more time with it because it was an interesting experience. But yes, it requires you to move forward as if you were going to take a step, but not take your weight completely off your foot, just lean forward as if you were about to start walking,

and that makes the segway go, which is kind of cool. Um. Now, the way it does that is it has a complex system of gyroscopes inside to kind of let it know what orientation the segue is in relative to the ground. Right. It has five gyroscopes in fact, and technically it's really only using three of them. Two of them are fail safe. Yeah. Yeah, three of them are meant to detect things like forward, leaning forward, leaning backward, and tilt to the left or

right right. Okay, but so so a gyroscope. Let's talk about what a gyroscope is because a little bit integral. Yeah, so it's basically just a spinning we will inside a frame. Yeah, the frame itself is stable and free. The spinning wheel has um well, it's rotating around an axis, right, so you've got the access at the center of the wheel.

The wheel rotates and then it was it resists changes forces that would change the alignment of that gyroscope so well, because if you push on the on the spinning wheel, it's just going to transfer into it's it's called precessing. This is a really this is an interesting thing. It's actually it's one of those things that's kind of difficult to explain in an audio podcast. First of all, let me tell you that at how stuff works dot com we have an article on how gyroscopes work, which includes

video showing what I'm about to talk about. So if you have trouble visualizing what I'm about to explain, despite the fact that we're both gesticulating wildly, yeah, really, I mean, there's only so much I can get across and radio, right, but you can go there and look it up. But what the gyroscope does is the this whole thing of precessing is Imagine that you have a bicycle wheel suspended

from a string. Strings tied to the ceiling somewhere. The bicycle wheels hanging down the The string is tied to the axis of the wheel, so it could still spin freely. Okay, got it. Now, if you were to align that wheel so it's vertical relative to the ground, so the wheel is as if it was on a bicycle that you

were riding down the street. Okay. The string is tied to one side of that axis, so there's a string that's coming down on one side of the access to the other side of the access doesn't have a string tied to it, so there's nothing to keep it vertical. If you were to just let go, that wheel would flop down into the horizontal uh formation. It would just

be parallel to the ground. Correct more or less. If you were to turn a vertical and then start spinning the wheel, it would remain vertically and it would slowly begin to rotate around the string. So that's the precession, is that it's rotating around a different access perpendicular to the one of its main mos. Now, why is it staying vertical as opposed to flopping over. The reason for that is that if you were to apply a force to say, let's say you've got the bicycle wheel spinning

in your arms. Okay, you're you're holding the you're holding the axis in front of you, and the wheel is vertical and you've got spinning. You can do this. I've seen science museums that have had this where you sit in a swivel chair and you hold the bicycle wheel in front of you, like you extend your arms out so that the wheel can spin freely in front of you. If you try and tilt that wheel, you'll feel resistance. And the reason for that is that imagine that, you know,

take a still image, like you're able to freeze time. Okay, I can so, all right, Well that's good, And you're going to tilt the wheel so that the top of the wheel from your perspective, would be moving to the left and the bottom of the wheel would be moving to the right. You're tilting it on a diagonal. Okay. Now, as that wheel is spinning the point where you would be turning it to the left, that that's you're applying

a force to that section. So imagine imagine a spot at the very top of the wheel, at the vertical apex of that wheel. Okay, that's where you're applying the force to move to the left. Now the wheel is actually spinning. So if we were to jump ahead twenty frames, now the point is directly in front of the wheel, it's no longer at the top. It is rotated around to be in the front, and uh, it still wants to go toward the left. Go ahead another twenty frames.

Now the point is at the bottom of the wheel. It still wants to go to the left. But the force you're applying is trying to make the bottom of the wheel go to the right. So the force you're applying is trying to push the wheels direction in one way. But because that reference point was at the top at the beginning and it's still trying to go to the left from when you were applying the force at the

very beginning, those two forces cancel each other out. It resists the force to make it move in a different direction, and then you also have the precession. So if you're singing a swivel chair you start to spin around. It's kind of fun. Uh, this is a great cheap way to entertain small children. Um. Anyway, it's an interesting just an interesting fact of physics is that the gyroscope in

this this stable frame will react in this way. But so, okay, So, so the point of gyroscopes being in devices like this is that if you measure the position of the spinning wheel inside of its frame, you can determine the the pitch and the pitch rate. Yeah, exactly, You're you're looking at like the the frame itself can move freely within the confines of whatever it is you're talking what you're talking about, whether it's it could be a segue, could be an airplane, it could be a phone, um, and

so it can move freely within that context. And it maybe a solid state drive, as is the case with the segue, may not be an actual physical gyros Yeah, and we'll we'll get into that in just a second, right. And but if you're able to do that in such a way, then the gyroscope and the pitch detection will allow the UH will give enough information so that some sort of processor can take that information in and know what orientation the segue is in relative to the ground.

So by detecting these changes and by detecting the forces that are enacting upon these different gyroscopes. The segue can interpret that and say, oh, I should engage the motor to drive forward, or I should stop, or I should move back backward exactly, or I should I should probably put up a warning because this guy is really leaning over a bit too far right right? Um, but so so yeah, So the kind of gyroscopes that are that are in a segue are the solid state angular rate sensors. Yes,

that that are basically the way that I understand. It's a little silicon plate. Yes, and I think I actually said that the correct way the first time. Yes, you did silicon, not silicone. You're exactly right, two separate issues. Um. And so it's a it's a silicon silicon plate mounted on the support frame and you run. You run an electrostatic current across the plate and wiggles the silicon particles around and makes the plate as a whole vibrate in

a very predictable way. Um. And when there's a physical change in the forces, meaning when you've tilted in some way. Yeah, yeah, when when you physically move the plate on its access

access Yes, talking is great. The particles suddenly shift and the vibration changes right, And by changing of vibration, you know that there's a change in the state that you are in, whether that's a tilt or you know, whatever other thing you might have this gyroscope, and but in the case of the segue, we're talking about specifically the tilt of the segue itself. Right, So if you hook a computer up to this, that can measure the precise

change right and interpret it exactly. So if it says like, oh, it's changed a little bit, like the vibration has changed a little bit, indicating that the person is starting to lean forward, time to engage the motors. If it's changed a lot, in mind, meaning that the person has leaned forward pretty hard, which indicates that you should move at

a fat your pace. So you've got these motors that will engage in order to activate the wheels, and the wheels begin to turn and that's where you get the motion. So the thing that's keeping this all going is um you know, you've got the gyroscopic sensors that's giving the information, But then you have two circuit boards that have controllers on them as ten microprocessors total in the original segue, and those microprocessors are what's taking in all this information

and uh and and translating it into action. Yeah, yeah, that that first one. Um, the microprocessors would check the position sensors about a hundred times per second, that's right. Yeah, So that way it can make sure that it's giving the right information to the motors so that you're you're moving at the right speed compared to how you are

how you're physically manipulating the segue right right. It's it's also got in there, um, a couple of tilt sensors filled with electrolyte fluid, electrolytes being of course what plants crave, thank you, which which is again just like your inner ear. Yeah, yeah, it's your interear has fluid in it, and that's what helps you determine what your orientation is relative to your environment.

This is why one of the reasons why when people go up in the vomit commet, that's why it's called that, because when you're in the vomit commet, you're you're the sensory information you're getting from your eyes and from your your you know, what you're feeling is so different from what your inner ear is trying to make sense of.

When this fluid is something. Yeah. Yeah, it's basically, you've just got this little sensor in your head where you've got a level of fluid, and that is how you calibrate yourself to the ground by based on on where the fluid is tilting right and in a freefall motion. That that information ends up being a little weird and so a lot of people end up again losing their lunch, which is why they often refer to the planes that

take these these flights as the vomit commet. Yeah, but it is interesting that the segue itself has this electoral life. Not you don't have to worry about your segue losing its lunch. Don't worry about that part. That part similarity has now ended. But other than that, it is using a very similar approach to detect tilt as the way humans do which again kind of cool that Dean came and is taking taking direction from the way our bodies do stuff to help inform him on the way he

makes technology. I blame it on his extensive medical background. Yeah, and again the Luke arm another example of that. Right, he's taking that that how do humans do things and how can we make technology that emulates this? He was also when he was in college. He was the first He invented the first drug injection pump and later the first portable insulin pump, which is part of how he

made such such much money. And the cool thing to me is that it's obvious that what drives him is a desire to innovate and to help people yea, And

he talks very passionately. There's some really really good interviews with him will Lincome on social where he's talking about watching people use his inventions for the first time and and them kind of you know, people who haven't been able to move this way ever and in some cases and in them and just the amount of pride and and just awesome that happens, and the fact that that that is what what really uh gives them an incentive to continue. It's pretty interesting stuff. It's it's a really

cool story. And in fact, there's a whole section of the Segway story that we need to get into, which involves the whole hype issue and a little bit more about the the original Segue models that came out and and some controversy that Segue has had over the years. We'll talk about that in just a minute, but first Before we do that, let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsor. Let's segue back into our episode. I couldn't resist, and so just a few more facts about

the original segue. Keep in mind that they've made several different models over the course of the segways life, but the earlier ones they had a top speed of about twelve and a half miles per hour, which is around twenty kilometers per hour, right, I think, and I think in some other countries it was maybe thirteen and a half. But but yes, yeah, yeah, it all depended on well, I also depend on what which model you had, because

they did, they did do a range of them. We have an article on our site how the Segway works, and that one we specifically looked at the segwe HT, which was one of the earlier models. Um it required about six hours of charging, It had a range of around seventeen miles, which was about twenty eight kilometers, and um. The current segways are called PT, which stands for Personal Transporter, and they have a whole line of them that do different things. Yeah, for for for like ce travel versus

off roads, versus security purposes. But they've got one specifically for golf courses. Yep, they've got somewhere. They have like all these containers on them so that you can carry stuff so if you have to transport things. Granted, none of them are going to replace the minivan, so soccer moms are not going to be able to I mean, I guess you could maybe tie a couple of of a red wagons behind and just like like a mama duck.

I was really waiting for you to say, like small children to the handlebars, and it was like, I don't think that I would. I wouldn't advocate that. I wouldn't advocate that. I wouldn't advocate the wagons actually either. That would be a disaster. But anyway, Um, the the motors of those early segues had about two horsepower worth of power and had a two stage transmission with a four to one gear ratio with a helical gear assembly and

it was actually a harmonic assembly. Yeah. They engineered it so that the sounds that the two meshes in the gearbox would were exactly two octaves apart, so they would harmonize. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, some might say crazy. Um it weighed the original the HT, the one that we talked

about in our article. Weighed about eighty three pounds, which is about thirty eight KOs, and it could carry a person of up to two d sixty pounds, which is about hundred eighteen ms or for my friends in England eighteen and a half stone. Uh. It had two lithium ion batteries to supply power recharge. Obviously you wouldn't want to have to PLoP out a different battery every fifteen

to seventeen miles or so um. And it used an electronic key system with a bit encrypted digital code, so you had this key that would plug into It's sort of like a little like like flash drive, except you wouldn't have called it that then, because right you would have called it, well, you could have called it that then they'd had to flash at that point. But it

really wasn't. But it was a digital key that has a hundred twenty eight bit encrypted code on it, so that the segue will only work with that code and you don't have to worry about someone We not necessarily not have to worry about it. But if someone did run off with your segue, they couldn't use it. They would have to literally lift it up and move it away, which kind of defeats the point, right. So that's that's the that's the basic model that we talked about in

our in our not our podcasts, our article. But there are quite a few others that are out now. Like I said, there's a the Eye two, which is your basic normal terrain segue, and then there's two which is the the off road next to Adventure next to adventure off road travel. Yeah, and they've even got some that were you know, they worked with DARPA to to design a kind of segue that was used as a platform

for robotics UM. They've worked they've created different models like three wheeled and four wheeled vehicles based on the Seguay technology UM for various things. Here in Atlanta, we have Atlanta Ambassadors. These are people who are in downtown Atlanta who often help out during big events, like when when something's going on downtown and uh, you know there's gonna

be a lot of people there. Uh. These folks are there to kind of help give directions and and you know someone's like, hey, I'm looking for the Georgia Aquarium. Where do I go from here? I was, Oh, you need to walk down this two blocks and take a left, that kind of thing. A lot of them have segways, so I see them whenever i'm down town for you know, Dragon con St. Patrick's Day Parade, which at the time of this recording will be in just a couple of days.

Um So, but they have them. I've seen them in airports, a lot of airports, have I've seen, especially airports security on movies. I've seen police on these. Yeah. They were big at the Beijing Olympics. In In fact, I want to say that, um that the most I well, I think the most I ever saw at one point was actually at Epcot because, like I said, Epcot Center, uh not Epcot Center, they used to be called Epcot Center.

I was there when it opened, because, as Lauren has pointed out numerous times, I'm old, but I remember going to Epcot and seeing people on these and that was probably the first time I saw them in person. But go back to when it was unveiled, or even before

it was unveiled. Came in actually came up with the idea in the late nineties, like and he had this idea of creating devices that could operate on pedestrian sidewalks and paths, and in two thousand one, the company that would become Segue broke ground on its manufacturing plant in New Hampshire, which is where Dean caymans from. Yeah. They they broke around in February and I think completed it in November. Yep, yep, right in November December, and they

adopted the name Segue in December two thous one. And that's actually when they unveiled the Segue, the first models of it on Good Morning America, a television program that's kind of a news oriented television program here in the United States. And I actually saw this. I saw the unveiling episode. You you stayed home, stayed home from work. You I didn't stay home from work. I delayed leaving. Uh Am, I gonna get in trouble. I mean, I

haven't worked for this company in years. Two thousand one, I was not working for How Stuff Works, I was I was not here. I was working for a totally different company. I did drag my feet leaving the house that morning because I knew that this was happening everywhere in the news. It had been that there was going to be the incredible, incredible device, and it had two code names that I recall off top my head. One was it right all caps, it like a very clown,

and then the other one was nice Pennywise. The other one was Tim Curry, was the television ad uptation Stephen King. The second one was Ginger Ginger, Yeah, and that was

it was. It had been codenamed Ginger based on the fact that the wheelchair that Decca had designed earlier was called Fred upstairs within the lab based on Fred a stair because they were they were saying that it just dances right up the stairs and there was a wheelchair that could climb stairs Fred and then Ginger and so and so Ginger Ginger could do everything Fred could do backwards in hesh. So not that the segue necessarily did, but I it's just one of my favorite little quotes,

um um. But but so, a journalist had started writing this book called Code named Ginger, and it was leaked at the beginning of two thousand one, I think by Inside dot com. And this is I think what really created all of this insane hype, because it was the book took such pains to not talk specifically about what this machine did, but it was going to change the world.

And you got these quotes from people like like Steve Jobs that were like, this is this is going to be bigger than the PC again without it actually revealing what it was. Is that the people who had found out about it said it was going to be this phenomenal technology that was going to fundamentally change the way we live, and and it was built up so much. I mean, hype is seems like a like a good

thing hypothetically. Well, I was going to say that hype is probably not even strong enough at a word, considering that, you know, the deliverables that were being promised on based on this technology that no one outside of a very small group of people had any knowledge about, and people were saying that that cities were going to be redesigned around this thing, and that it was going to be

bigger than the Internet. Yeah, and then Good Morning America had its unveiling and before the show, I remember, like days before the show aired, Uh, there were already rumors that it was going to be some sort of motorized scooter device. And this was based off patents that had been filed as well as Dean Cayman's previous work with the wheelchairs and things of that nature. And so when

it actually happened. Like I was hoping at the time that it wasn't going to end up being a scooter, because I was thinking, like, if it's something totally different, that's gonna be awesome. If it's a scooter, it still could be awesome, but it's gonna be it's not going to be as cool as if it were something totally out of left field. And then I saw it and I thought, well, that's interesting, but is it really going to change the world? And I understood what they were

going for. They were saying that, you know, especially in cities, particularly in cities, which is where the majority of people tend to live. Not that not that there aren't plenty of people on rural area population density, Yeah, yeah, you've got very dense populations in cities that traffic is a real problem. You've got people who are getting in their cars to go relatively short distances to do basic stuff like here in Atlanta. Uh, there's scree mentioned the traffic

on the show about once every other episode. And not just traffic though I was going to say that we don't have like our our public transportation system is not doesn't measure up to public transportation systems, and some other cities like DC or New York or Chicago. Um, now we do have one and and you can use it, but it's just not ideal. It's not doesn't run as frequently as some other cities, and it doesn't doesn't go

to as many places exactly. So that means that if you want to get around Atlanta and you want to do it effectively, you pretty much have to have a car. And the idea was that for cities like Atlanta and other cities that have similar issues, the segue could end up allowing you to go further than you would if you were on foot, uh, and not clog up all

the streets. So it would alleviate traffic problems. It would start because as an electric vehicle, it does not actually generate any any greenhouse gases or toxins, although you could argue that depending on how the electricity was generated, that's still a problem. It's just not being created by the vehicle itself. It's not direct. It's a couple steps, yeah, exactly. Um, but that would also be a thing, and that it would uh, you know, it could. It could really be

a big benefit. But for that to work, you have to have an infrastructure that supports that kind of transportation at the very least bike lanes or or really wide sidewalks, really wid sidewalks. One of the big things that that Decca and sege we're trying to do was create legislature that would allow the segway to to go on sidewalks. They had huge pushback from a lot of communities. I think that it's that they're banned entirely on sidewalks in the UK maybe and some as they are I know

in some cities. They definitely are very state by state and municipality by municipality. It probably doesn't surprise you to know that the first state to legalize the segue on pedestrian sidewalks was in fact New Hampshire, where the Segue was located. It was that that was passed into law on February two thousand two. Uh and uh. And it wasn't until November eighteenth, two thousand two that segways went on sale to the public for the first time on Amazon dot Com. Hey guys, I want to take a

break here. I want to transition from this episode into an ad break. So we're going to call that a segue. Segue two thousand five was when Disney World was introducing the Around the World at Epcot Segue Tour. So for those who have not been to Epcot, it's divided into

two big sections. You have the Future World section, where it's all about energy and transportation and the things that are going to be important to us in the years to come, and kind of the innovations that we can expect, or maybe even stuff that you know is really far out there, maybe it will never happen. The other one is the World Showcase, which has it's almost like a

permanent World's Fair. It has a has different pavilions that represent various countries in the world, and they are the Around the World Segue Tour was a segue tour that would take you around the World Showcase, and it was like a two hour long tour, and it would allow you to start to explore the World Showcase a couple of hours before it was open to the general public.

Because the way that Epcot works, or at least it used to I assume it still does, is when the doors would open, meaning that when they would let you into the park, you could only go into the Future World part for the first couple of hours. The World Showcase would be held off and like like if the park opens at eight am, then the World Showcase would open at ten. So this tour would allow you to go through the World Showcase at eight am, so you don't have to worry about running down Jimmy who isn't

paying attention because he wants a Mickey Mousetall right. Yeah, Disney is actually banned the use of segways other than in their tours. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah. One of the problems that it's had with all of this is that UM segways are not technically graded for medical use.

UM they are, although they can help people with disabilities move from one place to another because because Decca worked with Johnson and Johnson on some of their UM some of the gyroscopic platform technology, Johnson and Johnson actually owns that copyright and for for medical use and interesting, Yeah, I did not know that. That didn't come up in

my research. I know that on September four, two thousand and six, they actually issued a recall for twenty three thousand segways and all of them and that was that was all of them at that at that time because there was a software glitch and that software glitch would cause the wheels to occasionally and spontaneously reverse direction, which obviously that would be bad thing. I mean if you're writing on it and you're not strapped into this thing,

which you're not. Yeah, well, it's like the way I explained it to people, as I imagine you're walking down down the street and then suddenly the ground underneath you shifts direction to opposite the way. You know, you would end up on your back pretty quickly. And in fact, there were people who fell off the segway, which you know, when when I was first introduced, that was one of the big things that they were saying that, you know, because of all the gyroscopes would be really not that

would be impossible, but it would be hard. People have to be trying. But then with this software glitch, you know, made it very easy to fall off a segue if it happened, and in fact, people were ended up getting some injuries, like some broken wrists and things like that. There was a smaller recall back in A two thousand three because when the charge got too low, the segway would just stop very abruptly and they had to you

start tumbling off the same sort of thing. Um. I know that in in two thousand nine, Dean came and ended up selling the company, and he sold it to Jim Hesseldon. Last name, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing correctly. I'm not sure. He known as Jimmy Jimmy in the UK, who this guy who's a businessman and a philanthropist, really really known for his philanthropic endeavors. And tragically in September

he uh hesseled and died in an accident. He actually he was on a segway and he ended up falling off the edge of a cliff in a wooded area. He was in one of the off road segways and supposedly he encountered a walker on a path and uh and reversed to get out of the walker's way and templed over. Oh I did not, I didn't see that. That's that's that's kind of unconfirmed. I think that I read that on like on like daily mail or something. Yeah. So anyway, it was a tragic accident. It was a

terrible thing. And uh, you know, I cannot say for certain, but I have a feeling that that was part of what prompted segue to uh inserts so if you go to visit the Segway website, a little Segway safety pop up will appear and tell you that, you know, you need to review the safety procedures of and know how to write a segue in order for you to operate one safely. And so there's a there's an actual pop up that will obscure your view of the Segue website

until you dismiss it. And um, they even have a full video that explains you know, how the segway works and the best way to operate it safely so that you don't end up injuring yourself. Um. And on February, Segue was acquired by Summit Strategic Investments l C, which

is the current company that owns the brand. And uh, yeah, that's that's kind of where we are right now, just just a few Actually, on this March sixth, they announced the development of a three wheel security device planned to be coming out in Q four, uh this this year. Um and yeah, I mean, you know, so it's a reading all about this kind of broke my heart because because Cayman was so passionate about how this this terrific device could really change the world and change people's lives

and change our city escapes for the better. And it fizzled so much. You know, it's we we talked about how a company debuted in two thousand two, they started selling the things. In two thousand six, they had only sold twenty three thousand units. They were hoping to have been selling forty thousand per year um and you know, a lot of things happened. It was It's been a

tough time the past decade or so for consumer right. Yeah, you've had economic downturns, You've had resistance on the part of many municipalities to allow the segue to travel along things like sidewalks. There's also other just practical considerations. I mean, obviously a segue is great if you happen to live in a place where the climate is nice and mild.

But if you are in a place that gets a lot of rain, says you're not going to be covered in the rain, You're going to actually be out there, and depending upon those segways made, it may not operate so well in the right after a while, or you know, like I've hung out New Hampshire, there are many months in New Hampshire that I would not want to be k yeah, So there's there's lots of reasons why the segua adoption may have been slower, and I think the main one is just that, you know, we were so

far along in the infrastructure that we rely on already, like we're so dependent upon a certain way for our cities to to work for us to get around and comfortably that to expect a change in that is a little on the optimistic side. It would require a huge amount of effort, time and money, and and when I say a huge amount of time, I'm talking decades to

really refit a city in such a way. So it would be ideal for using something like a segue, particularly if you're in a city that has a actually a fairly healthy pedestrian population, healthy and is in there are a lot of people out there walking, not necessarily that they're all in great health. Atlanta not so great for pedestrians, I would say, I mean pedestrians. We have very few

sidewalks outside of our main metropolitan areas. And you know, that's the other thing with the segways is that I think that the concept was always for them to be secondary to a car, to like have a car and then have the segway in it, and you know, park the car somewhere and then take the segway out and go about your business. Right, or if you happen to live, like, you know, two miles away from a market, then you

can just take for that. Sure. But you know, but when these units cost over five grand to pop, yeah, and they weigh almost a hundred pounds, then you know that's it's not easy to carry them around. Yeah, that's that's that's one of me. So that's you know, yeah, that's right, Like okay, So anyway, I'm just depressed now because I'm thinking about how much weight I need to lose before I come close to being a segway. Um. But anyway, yeah, there there are a lot of There

are a lot of reasons. I think that that explained why the segue did not become the thing of the future. It was certainly an incredible innovation. It was a really interesting, uh engineering feat. I've seen similar products come out that are based on the same general principles as the Segue. Some of them are things like motorized roller skates or a motorized skateboard kind of thing. Um, Honda came out with a unicycle looking sort of thing that that that

works on a similar basis. And I think that Toyota, I mean, they didn't come out with it. It's in prototype. I've seen him. Let's see us. I've seen a motorized Essentially, it's a motorized unicycle that you stand on and again, just like with the segue, you would lean forward to indicate that you want to move forward. And I remember hearing that it takes about thirty to forty five minutes to kind of acclimate yourself to it to where you

can comfortably maneuver through an environment. Say, I don't know, a giant conference room that's filled with hundreds of thousands of people like cees just high example, if I had been on there, I would have probably mangled at least forty or fifty people before I Actually, no, let's be fair, I probably would have run over myself. And yeah, yeah, and you know hypothetically, and these things only go twelve point five miles an hour. Um that that is on purpose.

They have a speed limit her in them. That's that's the issue that caused the recall back in two thousand six. The speed limitter was was malfunctioning. Um yeah, so I mean it's you know, there were definitely ideas to uh to really uh to really uh to to make it as useful as possible and limit the possible malfunctions or injuries that can happen when people start using a technology that as a brand new mode of transportation. I mean, obviously have to take those things into account. I hope

you guys enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff. I can always tell that they're a big hit by the amount of eye rolling that Tari gives me as she listens to my puns. If you guys have any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, let me know. Let me know on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for us at both of those locations is text stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tex Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.

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