Segway a Not So New Technology

I’ve read today Yugatech’s blog and there is a thing that he mentioned about Segway which tickles my curiosity. I made a little research to find out what it is. Then I found out that it was a vehicle similar to lawn mower (see video below). But actually it is a kind of a motorized unicycle (with two wheels on each side) which can stand upright and moves just using your body movements and steering handles. It was powered by high torque electric motors and powerful lithium polymer batteries and the controls are stabilized by computers and a gyroscope which can detect any imbalance which enables it to correct itself and stand upright. Quite impressive if you look the actual video on how it works.

Anyway it is not new, it was already revealed in December 2001 and invented by Dean Kamen an American entrepreneur and an inventor. It is produced by Segway Inc. of New Hampshire. The name “Segway” is a homophone of “segue” (a smooth transition, literally Italian for “follows”). PT is an initialism for personal transporter while the old acronym HT was an initialism for human transporter. ( From Wikipedia ). Since this technology is owned by Segway, it doesn’t come cheap. In the US, a new Segway currently (MSRP, August 2007) costs between $5,145 and $6,175. ( Can’t afford that much, maybe I’ll wait for the made in China )

I guess we won’t be needing those thing around in the Philippines with so many tricycles around which makes people lazier. I remember this morning, A chubby guy rode a tricycle just two blocks from his home to the gate going outside the subdivision. Maybe technology has it’s evil, it will make people lazier. See the video commercial below.

Posted by Manuel

Manuel Montala was an online entrepreneur who enjoys blogging about entrepreneurship and gathering information for his blog to help budding entrepreneurs. You can also reach him on twitter: http://twitter.com/mmontala

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