Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and love all Things Tech. And it
Speaker 1: is Friday, so it's time for another classic episode. This
Speaker 1: episode is How Segways Work, and it originally published our
Speaker 1: March two thousand. Segways were supposed to truly transform everything.
Speaker 1: The prediction was that they were going to make cities
Speaker 1: completely different. Um, I would argue that that didn't happen,
Speaker 1: but we probably saw them pave the way, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, for the e scooter revolution that
Speaker 1: started around. But let's sit back and listen to this
Speaker 1: classic episode. Lauren, you pointed out to me that we
Speaker 1: actually we as in tech stuff recorded in an episode
Speaker 1: about Dean Cayman, who is the founder of Segue a
Speaker 1: long long time ago, a very long time agoack in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Yeah, well, he's done a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other really cool stuff. Yeah. He invented a thing
Speaker 1: called a Luke arm, which is a robotic arm that
Speaker 1: for people who have lost a limb. Yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit. I bet about that in a whole
Speaker 1: other podcast thing we're doing. Yeah, over and Forward Thinking.
Speaker 1: It's great show, you guys. If you haven't checked out
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, you should definitely check it out. It's great stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also invented a water purification device called the sling Shot,
Speaker 1: which can take pretty much anything that has water content
Speaker 1: in it and purify it into drinkable water. So you
Speaker 1: can take sewage and put it through this thing and
Speaker 1: it would actually produce clean, drinkable water and it's meant
Speaker 1: for communities that have uh, you know, have trouble accessing
Speaker 1: clean water. Fantastic thing. He's partnered with some pretty big
Speaker 1: companies for that. But the segue, I think is where
Speaker 1: a lot of people no Dean Cayman like they they
Speaker 1: heard about it that because of the segue, well it got.
Speaker 1: It got a great deal of publicity, which we will
Speaker 1: talk about later in the episode. Because it was the
Speaker 1: hype for it is can really only be called hype.
Speaker 1: It was very intent. It was it was like it
Speaker 1: was like if you had heard that this rock and
Speaker 1: roll band that had not released an album in like
Speaker 1: ten years was getting back together to do their first
Speaker 1: studio album. Uh, and that you know in a decade,
Speaker 1: and that would that would be kind of similar to
Speaker 1: the hype build up that not only were they going
Speaker 1: to do an album, but they were going to revolutionize
Speaker 1: the entire music industry with this album. That's that's the level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair. So we'll talk about that in a bit,
Speaker 1: but first we wanted to kind of talk about actually
Speaker 1: what it was and how it worked. So if you
Speaker 1: were to look at one of these things, in case
Speaker 1: you have not seen it, it looks like a little
Speaker 1: two wheeled scooter, but the wheels are are side by side.
Speaker 1: They're not in line with one another. Their side by side.
Speaker 1: And when you would stand on a platform with the
Speaker 1: left wheel to your left and the right wheel to
Speaker 1: your right, there's a bar that comes straight up vertically
Speaker 1: from the platform. Their handlebars handle bars that you hold
Speaker 1: onto and then when you when you lean, it moves.
Speaker 1: When you lean forward, it starts to move forward. When
Speaker 1: you lean backward, it stops. If you lean back enough,
Speaker 1: it'll go backward a little bit. But it's um and
Speaker 1: uh and and the new models these days, when you
Speaker 1: tilt the handlebars, that is how you steer. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the original one, you would twist one of the handlebars
Speaker 1: the right handlebars, so rapping a motorcycle style exactly. And
Speaker 1: if you if you twisted, if you twisted one way,
Speaker 1: it would turn left, and you twist the other way,
Speaker 1: it turns right. And the way it turns is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Uh. When you lean forward, both wheels engage
Speaker 1: and start moving forward simultaneously. Correct. When you turn, only
Speaker 1: one wheel starts to move in one direction and the
Speaker 1: other wheel allows you to pivot on on a dine
Speaker 1: right right. Yeah, it's a turning radius of zero zero
Speaker 1: turning radius, which is pretty amazing. And Uh, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about what he intend did this device to do in
Speaker 1: the second half, I think, but first we wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of talk about the actual technology that makes this possible.
Speaker 1: And Dean came in. Before he had gone into developing
Speaker 1: the Segway, had already started to work on some pretty
Speaker 1: cool systems. He did some work on motorized wheelchairs that
Speaker 1: were capable of doing things like climbing up staircases, and
Speaker 1: that work kind of led him to the idea of
Speaker 1: what if I created a device that could transport people
Speaker 1: at a good clip, uh, and make it so that
Speaker 1: it it works on the same principle as what it's
Speaker 1: like when you're walking. So when you're walk yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it works in a way that feels natural to us.
Speaker 1: Although I will tell you the first time you get
Speaker 1: on a segway, nothing feels natural about it. I haven't
Speaker 1: actually been on one. You have, I have, I've done.
Speaker 1: I've been on a segway. I really enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: had a great time. But have you ever engaged in
Speaker 1: an activity where the first step requires you to do
Speaker 1: something that feels totally unnatural to you, so that there's
Speaker 1: like your body is actually resisting what you have to do.
Speaker 1: But basically that's me walking every day. But I mean,
Speaker 1: but for for example, when I switched from a W
Speaker 1: A S D keyboard uh First Person Shooters to Xbox controller,
Speaker 1: I was like, what is this? See? For me, what
Speaker 1: I think of is like the first time when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid that I ever tried snorkeling. Because
Speaker 1: I put my face in the water and my body
Speaker 1: is telling me, for goodness sakes, man, whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't breathe. Then you're underwater, and you know, my my
Speaker 1: breast of my brain is saying, foolish, scary, reptile brain,
Speaker 1: that's not anything to worry about. You have a tube,
Speaker 1: but to the air, which is unobstructed, you can breathe
Speaker 1: all you like. And it took that leaped not literally
Speaker 1: did literally leap, but no, yeah, I couldn't get enough traction,
Speaker 1: but it took that mental to get to a point
Speaker 1: where I felt comfortable. Same sort of thing on a segue,
Speaker 1: because the way it works is that you start to
Speaker 1: lean forward as if you're going to take a step,
Speaker 1: because basically what walking is is controlled falling. Right Yeah,
Speaker 1: You're you're you're throwing the upper part of your body forward.
Speaker 1: You're you're essentially unbalancing yourself and then counting on one
Speaker 1: leg or the other hypothetically to catch it. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just you're constantly catching yourself with your legs. You're
Speaker 1: you know, especially if you're if you're walking at a
Speaker 1: good pace, you know, you'll see people they're leaning into
Speaker 1: it and uh and that weight is what's helping them
Speaker 1: propel forward. And then they swing a leg out, which
Speaker 1: catches them, stops them from falling, and they use that
Speaker 1: leg to push them forward, and then the other leg
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. And it's something that
Speaker 1: we once we start to learn how to walk. It
Speaker 1: just becomes natural to us. We don't even think about it, right, right, Well,
Speaker 1: we've got all kinds of a really really intricate inner
Speaker 1: ear sensory mechanisms to tell us when we're balanced and
Speaker 1: when we're off balanced, and how everything is going. It's
Speaker 1: a really it's such an automatic process that when you're
Speaker 1: not too you're not thinking about it. Yeah. And what's
Speaker 1: also funny is that that that same system of sensors
Speaker 1: that we have in our brain. Well, two things are funny.
Speaker 1: One thing is that a lot of that informed Dean
Speaker 1: Cayman when he was designing the segue. He wanted to
Speaker 1: have a mechanical means to sort of recreate that. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is that these sensors are not fails there,
Speaker 1: they're they're not foolproof. We we can fool ourselves. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is partially what leads us to things like motion sickness,
Speaker 1: where we get one set of input from a set
Speaker 1: of senses telling us one thing, and a different set
Speaker 1: of input from other senses telling us another thing, and
Speaker 1: that that conflict makes our brain say, Okay, if that's
Speaker 1: how you're gonna play it, we're losing lunch. That's it. Uh,
Speaker 1: someone who has suffered from from car sickness, motion sickness
Speaker 1: that way. Strangely enough, never got sea sick, but I've
Speaker 1: been motion sick from a car before. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: the the they are fallible, these systems in our our
Speaker 1: brains and in the segway. As it turns out, So
Speaker 1: Dean came and wanted to create the segue in such
Speaker 1: a way that it would require you to lean forward
Speaker 1: as if you were going to take a step, and
Speaker 1: that would be the indicator to move right and then
Speaker 1: and then sort of trust the machine. I imagine that
Speaker 1: that's where you have your initial problem, because you're you're
Speaker 1: you're leaning forward and you're not catching yourself. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know you've already been told, You've already been told,
Speaker 1: do not take your foot off the platform to step
Speaker 1: and catch yourself, because then you run yourself over. So
Speaker 1: not only do you not wearing a helmet at the
Speaker 1: time hypothetically, yes, I was wearing a helmet at the time.
Speaker 1: That was that was that was a requirement. I want
Speaker 1: to say that I was at Disney when I did this.
Speaker 1: It was at some park and I think it was Disney,
Speaker 1: and it was it was not the full epp Cut tour,
Speaker 1: which we can talk about. I've got a little factoid
Speaker 1: on that. Uh, there is a tour that very popular
Speaker 1: tour at Epcot that use as segways. It wasn't that,
Speaker 1: it was just a little like familiarize yourself with this
Speaker 1: technology thing, and I was like, I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: do this, and that's when I tried it. So I've
Speaker 1: only done at the one time, and I really would
Speaker 1: love to have more time with it because it was
Speaker 1: an interesting experience. But yes, it requires you to move
Speaker 1: forward as if you were going to take a step,
Speaker 1: but not take your weight completely off your foot, just
Speaker 1: lean forward as if you were about to start walking,
Speaker 1: and that makes the segway go, which is kind of cool. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the way it does that is it has a complex
Speaker 1: system of gyroscopes inside to kind of let it know
Speaker 1: what orientation the segue is in relative to the ground. Right.
Speaker 1: It has five gyroscopes in fact, and technically it's really
Speaker 1: only using three of them. Two of them are fail safe. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: three of them are meant to detect things like forward,
Speaker 1: leaning forward, leaning backward, and tilt to the left or
Speaker 1: right right. Okay, but so so a gyroscope. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about what a gyroscope is because a little bit integral. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's basically just a spinning we will inside a frame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the frame itself is stable and free. The spinning wheel
Speaker 1: has um well, it's rotating around an axis, right, so
Speaker 1: you've got the access at the center of the wheel.
Speaker 1: The wheel rotates and then it was it resists changes
Speaker 1: forces that would change the alignment of that gyroscope so well,
Speaker 1: because if you push on the on the spinning wheel,
Speaker 1: it's just going to transfer into it's it's called precessing.
Speaker 1: This is a really this is an interesting thing. It's
Speaker 1: actually it's one of those things that's kind of difficult
Speaker 1: to explain in an audio podcast. First of all, let
Speaker 1: me tell you that at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: we have an article on how gyroscopes work, which includes
Speaker 1: video showing what I'm about to talk about. So if
Speaker 1: you have trouble visualizing what I'm about to explain, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we're both gesticulating wildly, yeah, really, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's only so much I can get across and radio, right,
Speaker 1: but you can go there and look it up. But
Speaker 1: what the gyroscope does is the this whole thing of
Speaker 1: precessing is Imagine that you have a bicycle wheel suspended
Speaker 1: from a string. Strings tied to the ceiling somewhere. The
Speaker 1: bicycle wheels hanging down the The string is tied to
Speaker 1: the axis of the wheel, so it could still spin freely. Okay,
Speaker 1: got it. Now, if you were to align that wheel
Speaker 1: so it's vertical relative to the ground, so the wheel
Speaker 1: is as if it was on a bicycle that you
Speaker 1: were riding down the street. Okay. The string is tied
Speaker 1: to one side of that axis, so there's a string
Speaker 1: that's coming down on one side of the access to
Speaker 1: the other side of the access doesn't have a string
Speaker 1: tied to it, so there's nothing to keep it vertical.
Speaker 1: If you were to just let go, that wheel would
Speaker 1: flop down into the horizontal uh formation. It would just
Speaker 1: be parallel to the ground. Correct more or less. If
Speaker 1: you were to turn a vertical and then start spinning
Speaker 1: the wheel, it would remain vertically and it would slowly
Speaker 1: begin to rotate around the string. So that's the precession,
Speaker 1: is that it's rotating around a different access perpendicular to
Speaker 1: the one of its main mos. Now, why is it
Speaker 1: staying vertical as opposed to flopping over. The reason for
Speaker 1: that is that if you were to apply a force
Speaker 1: to say, let's say you've got the bicycle wheel spinning
Speaker 1: in your arms. Okay, you're you're holding the you're holding
Speaker 1: the axis in front of you, and the wheel is
Speaker 1: vertical and you've got spinning. You can do this. I've
Speaker 1: seen science museums that have had this where you sit
Speaker 1: in a swivel chair and you hold the bicycle wheel
Speaker 1: in front of you, like you extend your arms out
Speaker 1: so that the wheel can spin freely in front of you.
Speaker 1: If you try and tilt that wheel, you'll feel resistance.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is that imagine that, you know,
Speaker 1: take a still image, like you're able to freeze time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can so, all right, Well that's good, And you're
Speaker 1: going to tilt the wheel so that the top of
Speaker 1: the wheel from your perspective, would be moving to the
Speaker 1: left and the bottom of the wheel would be moving
Speaker 1: to the right. You're tilting it on a diagonal. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: as that wheel is spinning the point where you would
Speaker 1: be turning it to the left, that that's you're applying
Speaker 1: a force to that section. So imagine imagine a spot
Speaker 1: at the very top of the wheel, at the vertical
Speaker 1: apex of that wheel. Okay, that's where you're applying the
Speaker 1: force to move to the left. Now the wheel is
Speaker 1: actually spinning. So if we were to jump ahead twenty frames,
Speaker 1: now the point is directly in front of the wheel,
Speaker 1: it's no longer at the top. It is rotated around
Speaker 1: to be in the front, and uh, it still wants
Speaker 1: to go toward the left. Go ahead another twenty frames.
Speaker 1: Now the point is at the bottom of the wheel.
Speaker 1: It still wants to go to the left. But the
Speaker 1: force you're applying is trying to make the bottom of
Speaker 1: the wheel go to the right. So the force you're
Speaker 1: applying is trying to push the wheels direction in one way.
Speaker 1: But because that reference point was at the top at
Speaker 1: the beginning and it's still trying to go to the
Speaker 1: left from when you were applying the force at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, those two forces cancel each other out. It
Speaker 1: resists the force to make it move in a different direction,
Speaker 1: and then you also have the precession. So if you're
Speaker 1: singing a swivel chair you start to spin around. It's
Speaker 1: kind of fun. Uh, this is a great cheap way
Speaker 1: to entertain small children. Um. Anyway, it's an interesting just
Speaker 1: an interesting fact of physics is that the gyroscope in
Speaker 1: this this stable frame will react in this way. But so, okay, So,
Speaker 1: so the point of gyroscopes being in devices like this
Speaker 1: is that if you measure the position of the spinning
Speaker 1: wheel inside of its frame, you can determine the the
Speaker 1: pitch and the pitch rate. Yeah, exactly, You're you're looking
Speaker 1: at like the the frame itself can move freely within
Speaker 1: the confines of whatever it is you're talking what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, whether it's it could be a segue, could
Speaker 1: be an airplane, it could be a phone, um, and
Speaker 1: so it can move freely within that context. And it
Speaker 1: maybe a solid state drive, as is the case with
Speaker 1: the segue, may not be an actual physical gyros Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll get into that in just a second, right.
Speaker 1: And but if you're able to do that in such
Speaker 1: a way, then the gyroscope and the pitch detection will
Speaker 1: allow the UH will give enough information so that some
Speaker 1: sort of processor can take that information in and know
Speaker 1: what orientation the segue is in relative to the ground.
Speaker 1: So by detecting these changes and by detecting the forces
Speaker 1: that are enacting upon these different gyroscopes. The segue can
Speaker 1: interpret that and say, oh, I should engage the motor
Speaker 1: to drive forward, or I should stop, or I should
Speaker 1: move back backward exactly, or I should I should probably
Speaker 1: put up a warning because this guy is really leaning
Speaker 1: over a bit too far right right? Um, but so
Speaker 1: so yeah, So the kind of gyroscopes that are that
Speaker 1: are in a segue are the solid state angular rate sensors. Yes,
Speaker 1: that that are basically the way that I understand. It's
Speaker 1: a little silicon plate. Yes, and I think I actually
Speaker 1: said that the correct way the first time. Yes, you
Speaker 1: did silicon, not silicone. You're exactly right, two separate issues. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's a it's a silicon silicon plate mounted
Speaker 1: on the support frame and you run. You run an
Speaker 1: electrostatic current across the plate and wiggles the silicon particles
Speaker 1: around and makes the plate as a whole vibrate in
Speaker 1: a very predictable way. Um. And when there's a physical
Speaker 1: change in the forces, meaning when you've tilted in some way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when when you physically move the plate on its access
Speaker 1: access Yes, talking is great. The particles suddenly shift and
Speaker 1: the vibration changes right, And by changing of vibration, you
Speaker 1: know that there's a change in the state that you
Speaker 1: are in, whether that's a tilt or you know, whatever
Speaker 1: other thing you might have this gyroscope, and but in
Speaker 1: the case of the segue, we're talking about specifically the
Speaker 1: tilt of the segue itself. Right, So if you hook
Speaker 1: a computer up to this, that can measure the precise
Speaker 1: change right and interpret it exactly. So if it says like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's changed a little bit, like the vibration has changed
Speaker 1: a little bit, indicating that the person is starting to
Speaker 1: lean forward, time to engage the motors. If it's changed
Speaker 1: a lot, in mind, meaning that the person has leaned
Speaker 1: forward pretty hard, which indicates that you should move at
Speaker 1: a fat your pace. So you've got these motors that
Speaker 1: will engage in order to activate the wheels, and the
Speaker 1: wheels begin to turn and that's where you get the motion.
Speaker 1: So the thing that's keeping this all going is um
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the gyroscopic sensors that's giving the information,
Speaker 1: But then you have two circuit boards that have controllers
Speaker 1: on them as ten microprocessors total in the original segue,
Speaker 1: and those microprocessors are what's taking in all this information
Speaker 1: and uh and and translating it into action. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that first one. Um, the microprocessors would check the
Speaker 1: position sensors about a hundred times per second, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that way it can make sure that it's giving
Speaker 1: the right information to the motors so that you're you're
Speaker 1: moving at the right speed compared to how you are
Speaker 1: how you're physically manipulating the segue right right. It's it's
Speaker 1: also got in there, um, a couple of tilt sensors
Speaker 1: filled with electrolyte fluid, electrolytes being of course what plants crave,
Speaker 1: thank you, which which is again just like your inner ear. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's your interear has fluid in it, and that's what
Speaker 1: helps you determine what your orientation is relative to your environment.
Speaker 1: This is why one of the reasons why when people
Speaker 1: go up in the vomit commet, that's why it's called that,
Speaker 1: because when you're in the vomit commet, you're you're the
Speaker 1: sensory information you're getting from your eyes and from your
Speaker 1: your you know, what you're feeling is so different from
Speaker 1: what your inner ear is trying to make sense of.
Speaker 1: When this fluid is something. Yeah. Yeah, it's basically, you've
Speaker 1: just got this little sensor in your head where you've
Speaker 1: got a level of fluid, and that is how you
Speaker 1: calibrate yourself to the ground by based on on where
Speaker 1: the fluid is tilting right and in a freefall motion.
Speaker 1: That that information ends up being a little weird and
Speaker 1: so a lot of people end up again losing their lunch,
Speaker 1: which is why they often refer to the planes that
Speaker 1: take these these flights as the vomit commet. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it is interesting that the segue itself has this electoral life.
Speaker 1: Not you don't have to worry about your segue losing
Speaker 1: its lunch. Don't worry about that part. That part similarity
Speaker 1: has now ended. But other than that, it is using
Speaker 1: a very similar approach to detect tilt as the way
Speaker 1: humans do which again kind of cool that Dean came
Speaker 1: and is taking taking direction from the way our bodies
Speaker 1: do stuff to help inform him on the way he
Speaker 1: makes technology. I blame it on his extensive medical background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again the Luke arm another example of that. Right,
Speaker 1: he's taking that that how do humans do things and
Speaker 1: how can we make technology that emulates this? He was
Speaker 1: also when he was in college. He was the first
Speaker 1: He invented the first drug injection pump and later the
Speaker 1: first portable insulin pump, which is part of how he
Speaker 1: made such such much money. And the cool thing to
Speaker 1: me is that it's obvious that what drives him is
Speaker 1: a desire to innovate and to help people yea, And
Speaker 1: he talks very passionately. There's some really really good interviews
Speaker 1: with him will Lincome on social where he's talking about
Speaker 1: watching people use his inventions for the first time and
Speaker 1: and them kind of you know, people who haven't been
Speaker 1: able to move this way ever and in some cases
Speaker 1: and in them and just the amount of pride and
Speaker 1: and just awesome that happens, and the fact that that
Speaker 1: that is what what really uh gives them an incentive
Speaker 1: to continue. It's pretty interesting stuff. It's it's a really
Speaker 1: cool story. And in fact, there's a whole section of
Speaker 1: the Segway story that we need to get into, which
Speaker 1: involves the whole hype issue and a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the the original Segue models that came out and
Speaker 1: and some controversy that Segue has had over the years.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in just a minute, but first
Speaker 1: Before we do that, let's take a quick moment to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Let's segue back into our episode. I
Speaker 1: couldn't resist, and so just a few more facts about
Speaker 1: the original segue. Keep in mind that they've made several
Speaker 1: different models over the course of the segways life, but
Speaker 1: the earlier ones they had a top speed of about
Speaker 1: twelve and a half miles per hour, which is around
Speaker 1: twenty kilometers per hour, right, I think, and I think
Speaker 1: in some other countries it was maybe thirteen and a half.
Speaker 1: But but yes, yeah, yeah, it all depended on well,
Speaker 1: I also depend on what which model you had, because
Speaker 1: they did, they did do a range of them. We
Speaker 1: have an article on our site how the Segway works,
Speaker 1: and that one we specifically looked at the segwe HT,
Speaker 1: which was one of the earlier models. Um it required
Speaker 1: about six hours of charging, It had a range of
Speaker 1: around seventeen miles, which was about twenty eight kilometers, and um.
Speaker 1: The current segways are called PT, which stands for Personal Transporter,
Speaker 1: and they have a whole line of them that do
Speaker 1: different things. Yeah, for for for like ce travel versus
Speaker 1: off roads, versus security purposes. But they've got one specifically
Speaker 1: for golf courses. Yep, they've got somewhere. They have like
Speaker 1: all these containers on them so that you can carry
Speaker 1: stuff so if you have to transport things. Granted, none
Speaker 1: of them are going to replace the minivan, so soccer
Speaker 1: moms are not going to be able to I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could maybe tie a couple of of
Speaker 1: a red wagons behind and just like like a mama duck.
Speaker 1: I was really waiting for you to say, like small
Speaker 1: children to the handlebars, and it was like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that I would. I wouldn't advocate that. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: advocate that. I wouldn't advocate the wagons actually either. That
Speaker 1: would be a disaster. But anyway, Um, the the motors
Speaker 1: of those early segues had about two horsepower worth of
Speaker 1: power and had a two stage transmission with a four
Speaker 1: to one gear ratio with a helical gear assembly and
Speaker 1: it was actually a harmonic assembly. Yeah. They engineered it
Speaker 1: so that the sounds that the two meshes in the
Speaker 1: gearbox would were exactly two octaves apart, so they would harmonize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting, some might say crazy. Um it
Speaker 1: weighed the original the HT, the one that we talked
Speaker 1: about in our article. Weighed about eighty three pounds, which
Speaker 1: is about thirty eight KOs, and it could carry a
Speaker 1: person of up to two d sixty pounds, which is
Speaker 1: about hundred eighteen ms or for my friends in England
Speaker 1: eighteen and a half stone. Uh. It had two lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries to supply power recharge. Obviously you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to have to PLoP out a different battery every fifteen
Speaker 1: to seventeen miles or so um. And it used an
Speaker 1: electronic key system with a bit encrypted digital code, so
Speaker 1: you had this key that would plug into It's sort
Speaker 1: of like a little like like flash drive, except you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have called it that then, because right you would
Speaker 1: have called it, well, you could have called it that
Speaker 1: then they'd had to flash at that point. But it
Speaker 1: really wasn't. But it was a digital key that has
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty eight bit encrypted code on it, so
Speaker 1: that the segue will only work with that code and
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about someone We not necessarily
Speaker 1: not have to worry about it. But if someone did
Speaker 1: run off with your segue, they couldn't use it. They
Speaker 1: would have to literally lift it up and move it away,
Speaker 1: which kind of defeats the point, right. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the that's the basic model that we talked about in
Speaker 1: our in our not our podcasts, our article. But there
Speaker 1: are quite a few others that are out now. Like
Speaker 1: I said, there's a the Eye two, which is your
Speaker 1: basic normal terrain segue, and then there's two which is
Speaker 1: the the off road next to Adventure next to adventure
Speaker 1: off road travel. Yeah, and they've even got some that
Speaker 1: were you know, they worked with DARPA to to design
Speaker 1: a kind of segue that was used as a platform
Speaker 1: for robotics UM. They've worked they've created different models like
Speaker 1: three wheeled and four wheeled vehicles based on the Seguay
Speaker 1: technology UM for various things. Here in Atlanta, we have
Speaker 1: Atlanta Ambassadors. These are people who are in downtown Atlanta
Speaker 1: who often help out during big events, like when when
Speaker 1: something's going on downtown and uh, you know there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of people there. Uh. These folks are
Speaker 1: there to kind of help give directions and and you
Speaker 1: know someone's like, hey, I'm looking for the Georgia Aquarium.
Speaker 1: Where do I go from here? I was, Oh, you
Speaker 1: need to walk down this two blocks and take a left,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. A lot of them have segways,
Speaker 1: so I see them whenever i'm down town for you know,
Speaker 1: Dragon con St. Patrick's Day Parade, which at the time
Speaker 1: of this recording will be in just a couple of days.
Speaker 1: Um So, but they have them. I've seen them in airports,
Speaker 1: a lot of airports, have I've seen, especially airports security
Speaker 1: on movies. I've seen police on these. Yeah. They were
Speaker 1: big at the Beijing Olympics. In In fact, I want
Speaker 1: to say that, um that the most I well, I
Speaker 1: think the most I ever saw at one point was
Speaker 1: actually at Epcot because, like I said, Epcot Center, uh
Speaker 1: not Epcot Center, they used to be called Epcot Center.
Speaker 1: I was there when it opened, because, as Lauren has
Speaker 1: pointed out numerous times, I'm old, but I remember going
Speaker 1: to Epcot and seeing people on these and that was
Speaker 1: probably the first time I saw them in person. But
Speaker 1: go back to when it was unveiled, or even before
Speaker 1: it was unveiled. Came in actually came up with the
Speaker 1: idea in the late nineties, like and he had this
Speaker 1: idea of creating devices that could operate on pedestrian sidewalks
Speaker 1: and paths, and in two thousand one, the company that
Speaker 1: would become Segue broke ground on its manufacturing plant in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, which is where Dean caymans from. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: they broke around in February and I think completed it
Speaker 1: in November. Yep, yep, right in November December, and they
Speaker 1: adopted the name Segue in December two thous one. And
Speaker 1: that's actually when they unveiled the Segue, the first models
Speaker 1: of it on Good Morning America, a television program that's
Speaker 1: kind of a news oriented television program here in the
Speaker 1: United States. And I actually saw this. I saw the
Speaker 1: unveiling episode. You you stayed home, stayed home from work.
Speaker 1: You I didn't stay home from work. I delayed leaving.
Speaker 1: Uh Am, I gonna get in trouble. I mean, I
Speaker 1: haven't worked for this company in years. Two thousand one,
Speaker 1: I was not working for How Stuff Works, I was
Speaker 1: I was not here. I was working for a totally
Speaker 1: different company. I did drag my feet leaving the house
Speaker 1: that morning because I knew that this was happening everywhere
Speaker 1: in the news. It had been that there was going
Speaker 1: to be the incredible, incredible device, and it had two
Speaker 1: code names that I recall off top my head. One
Speaker 1: was it right all caps, it like a very clown,
Speaker 1: and then the other one was nice Pennywise. The other
Speaker 1: one was Tim Curry, was the television ad uptation Stephen King.
Speaker 1: The second one was Ginger Ginger, Yeah, and that was
Speaker 1: it was. It had been codenamed Ginger based on the
Speaker 1: fact that the wheelchair that Decca had designed earlier was
Speaker 1: called Fred upstairs within the lab based on Fred a
Speaker 1: stair because they were they were saying that it just
Speaker 1: dances right up the stairs and there was a wheelchair
Speaker 1: that could climb stairs Fred and then Ginger and so
Speaker 1: and so Ginger Ginger could do everything Fred could do
Speaker 1: backwards in hesh. So not that the segue necessarily did,
Speaker 1: but I it's just one of my favorite little quotes,
Speaker 1: um um. But but so, a journalist had started writing
Speaker 1: this book called Code named Ginger, and it was leaked
Speaker 1: at the beginning of two thousand one, I think by
Speaker 1: Inside dot com. And this is I think what really
Speaker 1: created all of this insane hype, because it was the
Speaker 1: book took such pains to not talk specifically about what
Speaker 1: this machine did, but it was going to change the world.
Speaker 1: And you got these quotes from people like like Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs that were like, this is this is going to
Speaker 1: be bigger than the PC again without it actually revealing
Speaker 1: what it was. Is that the people who had found
Speaker 1: out about it said it was going to be this
Speaker 1: phenomenal technology that was going to fundamentally change the way
Speaker 1: we live, and and it was built up so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, hype is seems like a like a good
Speaker 1: thing hypothetically. Well, I was going to say that hype
Speaker 1: is probably not even strong enough at a word, considering that,
Speaker 1: you know, the deliverables that were being promised on based
Speaker 1: on this technology that no one outside of a very
Speaker 1: small group of people had any knowledge about, and people
Speaker 1: were saying that that cities were going to be redesigned
Speaker 1: around this thing, and that it was going to be
Speaker 1: bigger than the Internet. Yeah, and then Good Morning America
Speaker 1: had its unveiling and before the show, I remember, like
Speaker 1: days before the show aired, Uh, there were already rumors
Speaker 1: that it was going to be some sort of motorized
Speaker 1: scooter device. And this was based off patents that had
Speaker 1: been filed as well as Dean Cayman's previous work with
Speaker 1: the wheelchairs and things of that nature. And so when
Speaker 1: it actually happened. Like I was hoping at the time
Speaker 1: that it wasn't going to end up being a scooter,
Speaker 1: because I was thinking, like, if it's something totally different,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be awesome. If it's a scooter, it still
Speaker 1: could be awesome, but it's gonna be it's not going
Speaker 1: to be as cool as if it were something totally
Speaker 1: out of left field. And then I saw it and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, that's interesting, but is it really going
Speaker 1: to change the world? And I understood what they were
Speaker 1: going for. They were saying that, you know, especially in cities,
Speaker 1: particularly in cities, which is where the majority of people
Speaker 1: tend to live. Not that not that there aren't plenty
Speaker 1: of people on rural area population density, Yeah, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got very dense populations in cities that traffic is a
Speaker 1: real problem. You've got people who are getting in their
Speaker 1: cars to go relatively short distances to do basic stuff
Speaker 1: like here in Atlanta. Uh, there's scree mentioned the traffic
Speaker 1: on the show about once every other episode. And not
Speaker 1: just traffic though I was going to say that we
Speaker 1: don't have like our our public transportation system is not
Speaker 1: doesn't measure up to public transportation systems, and some other
Speaker 1: cities like DC or New York or Chicago. Um, now
Speaker 1: we do have one and and you can use it,
Speaker 1: but it's just not ideal. It's not doesn't run as
Speaker 1: frequently as some other cities, and it doesn't doesn't go
Speaker 1: to as many places exactly. So that means that if
Speaker 1: you want to get around Atlanta and you want to
Speaker 1: do it effectively, you pretty much have to have a car.
Speaker 1: And the idea was that for cities like Atlanta and
Speaker 1: other cities that have similar issues, the segue could end
Speaker 1: up allowing you to go further than you would if
Speaker 1: you were on foot, uh, and not clog up all
Speaker 1: the streets. So it would alleviate traffic problems. It would
Speaker 1: start because as an electric vehicle, it does not actually
Speaker 1: generate any any greenhouse gases or toxins, although you could
Speaker 1: argue that depending on how the electricity was generated, that's
Speaker 1: still a problem. It's just not being created by the
Speaker 1: vehicle itself. It's not direct. It's a couple steps, yeah, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: but that would also be a thing, and that it
Speaker 1: would uh, you know, it could. It could really be
Speaker 1: a big benefit. But for that to work, you have
Speaker 1: to have an infrastructure that supports that kind of transportation
Speaker 1: at the very least bike lanes or or really wide sidewalks,
Speaker 1: really wid sidewalks. One of the big things that that
Speaker 1: Decca and sege we're trying to do was create legislature
Speaker 1: that would allow the segway to to go on sidewalks.
Speaker 1: They had huge pushback from a lot of communities. I
Speaker 1: think that it's that they're banned entirely on sidewalks in
Speaker 1: the UK maybe and some as they are I know
Speaker 1: in some cities. They definitely are very state by state
Speaker 1: and municipality by municipality. It probably doesn't surprise you to
Speaker 1: know that the first state to legalize the segue on
Speaker 1: pedestrian sidewalks was in fact New Hampshire, where the Segue
Speaker 1: was located. It was that that was passed into law
Speaker 1: on February two thousand two. Uh and uh. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until November eighteenth, two thousand two that segways went
Speaker 1: on sale to the public for the first time on
Speaker 1: Amazon dot Com. Hey guys, I want to take a
Speaker 1: break here. I want to transition from this episode into
Speaker 1: an ad break. So we're going to call that a segue.
Speaker 1: Segue two thousand five was when Disney World was introducing
Speaker 1: the Around the World at Epcot Segue Tour. So for
Speaker 1: those who have not been to Epcot, it's divided into
Speaker 1: two big sections. You have the Future World section, where
Speaker 1: it's all about energy and transportation and the things that
Speaker 1: are going to be important to us in the years
Speaker 1: to come, and kind of the innovations that we can expect,
Speaker 1: or maybe even stuff that you know is really far
Speaker 1: out there, maybe it will never happen. The other one
Speaker 1: is the World Showcase, which has it's almost like a
Speaker 1: permanent World's Fair. It has a has different pavilions that
Speaker 1: represent various countries in the world, and they are the
Speaker 1: Around the World Segue Tour was a segue tour that
Speaker 1: would take you around the World Showcase, and it was
Speaker 1: like a two hour long tour, and it would allow
Speaker 1: you to start to explore the World Showcase a couple
Speaker 1: of hours before it was open to the general public.
Speaker 1: Because the way that Epcot works, or at least it
Speaker 1: used to I assume it still does, is when the
Speaker 1: doors would open, meaning that when they would let you
Speaker 1: into the park, you could only go into the Future
Speaker 1: World part for the first couple of hours. The World
Speaker 1: Showcase would be held off and like like if the
Speaker 1: park opens at eight am, then the World Showcase would
Speaker 1: open at ten. So this tour would allow you to
Speaker 1: go through the World Showcase at eight am, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about running down Jimmy who isn't
Speaker 1: paying attention because he wants a Mickey Mousetall right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Disney is actually banned the use of segways other than
Speaker 1: in their tours. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the problems that it's had with all of this
Speaker 1: is that UM segways are not technically graded for medical use.
Speaker 1: UM they are, although they can help people with disabilities
Speaker 1: move from one place to another because because Decca worked
Speaker 1: with Johnson and Johnson on some of their UM some
Speaker 1: of the gyroscopic platform technology, Johnson and Johnson actually owns
Speaker 1: that copyright and for for medical use and interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did not know that. That didn't come up in
Speaker 1: my research. I know that on September four, two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, they actually issued a recall for twenty three
Speaker 1: thousand segways and all of them and that was that
Speaker 1: was all of them at that at that time because
Speaker 1: there was a software glitch and that software glitch would
Speaker 1: cause the wheels to occasionally and spontaneously reverse direction, which
Speaker 1: obviously that would be bad thing. I mean if you're
Speaker 1: writing on it and you're not strapped into this thing,
Speaker 1: which you're not. Yeah, well, it's like the way I
Speaker 1: explained it to people, as I imagine you're walking down
Speaker 1: down the street and then suddenly the ground underneath you
Speaker 1: shifts direction to opposite the way. You know, you would
Speaker 1: end up on your back pretty quickly. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there were people who fell off the segway, which you know,
Speaker 1: when when I was first introduced, that was one of
Speaker 1: the big things that they were saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: because of all the gyroscopes would be really not that
Speaker 1: would be impossible, but it would be hard. People have
Speaker 1: to be trying. But then with this software glitch, you know,
Speaker 1: made it very easy to fall off a segue if
Speaker 1: it happened, and in fact, people were ended up getting
Speaker 1: some injuries, like some broken wrists and things like that.
Speaker 1: There was a smaller recall back in A two thousand
Speaker 1: three because when the charge got too low, the segway
Speaker 1: would just stop very abruptly and they had to you
Speaker 1: start tumbling off the same sort of thing. Um. I
Speaker 1: know that in in two thousand nine, Dean came and
Speaker 1: ended up selling the company, and he sold it to
Speaker 1: Jim Hesseldon. Last name, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing correctly.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. He known as Jimmy Jimmy in the UK,
Speaker 1: who this guy who's a businessman and a philanthropist, really
Speaker 1: really known for his philanthropic endeavors. And tragically in September
Speaker 1: he uh hesseled and died in an accident. He actually
Speaker 1: he was on a segway and he ended up falling
Speaker 1: off the edge of a cliff in a wooded area.
Speaker 1: He was in one of the off road segways and
Speaker 1: supposedly he encountered a walker on a path and uh
Speaker 1: and reversed to get out of the walker's way and
Speaker 1: templed over. Oh I did not, I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's kind of unconfirmed. I think that I
Speaker 1: read that on like on like daily mail or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it was a tragic accident. It was a
Speaker 1: terrible thing. And uh, you know, I cannot say for certain,
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling that that was part of
Speaker 1: what prompted segue to uh inserts so if you go
Speaker 1: to visit the Segway website, a little Segway safety pop
Speaker 1: up will appear and tell you that, you know, you
Speaker 1: need to review the safety procedures of and know how
Speaker 1: to write a segue in order for you to operate
Speaker 1: one safely. And so there's a there's an actual pop
Speaker 1: up that will obscure your view of the Segue website
Speaker 1: until you dismiss it. And um, they even have a
Speaker 1: full video that explains you know, how the segway works
Speaker 1: and the best way to operate it safely so that
Speaker 1: you don't end up injuring yourself. Um. And on February,
Speaker 1: Segue was acquired by Summit Strategic Investments l C, which
Speaker 1: is the current company that owns the brand. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of where we are right now, just
Speaker 1: just a few Actually, on this March sixth, they announced
Speaker 1: the development of a three wheel security device planned to
Speaker 1: be coming out in Q four, uh this this year.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, I mean, you know, so it's a
Speaker 1: reading all about this kind of broke my heart because
Speaker 1: because Cayman was so passionate about how this this terrific
Speaker 1: device could really change the world and change people's lives
Speaker 1: and change our city escapes for the better. And it
Speaker 1: fizzled so much. You know, it's we we talked about
Speaker 1: how a company debuted in two thousand two, they started
Speaker 1: selling the things. In two thousand six, they had only
Speaker 1: sold twenty three thousand units. They were hoping to have
Speaker 1: been selling forty thousand per year um and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of things happened. It was It's been a
Speaker 1: tough time the past decade or so for consumer right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've had economic downturns, You've had resistance on the part
Speaker 1: of many municipalities to allow the segue to travel along
Speaker 1: things like sidewalks. There's also other just practical considerations. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously a segue is great if you happen to live
Speaker 1: in a place where the climate is nice and mild.
Speaker 1: But if you are in a place that gets a
Speaker 1: lot of rain, says you're not going to be covered
Speaker 1: in the rain, You're going to actually be out there,
Speaker 1: and depending upon those segways made, it may not operate
Speaker 1: so well in the right after a while, or you know,
Speaker 1: like I've hung out New Hampshire, there are many months
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire that I would not want to be
Speaker 1: k yeah, So there's there's lots of reasons why the
Speaker 1: segua adoption may have been slower, and I think the
Speaker 1: main one is just that, you know, we were so
Speaker 1: far along in the infrastructure that we rely on already,
Speaker 1: like we're so dependent upon a certain way for our
Speaker 1: cities to to work for us to get around and
Speaker 1: comfortably that to expect a change in that is a
Speaker 1: little on the optimistic side. It would require a huge
Speaker 1: amount of effort, time and money, and and when I
Speaker 1: say a huge amount of time, I'm talking decades to
Speaker 1: really refit a city in such a way. So it
Speaker 1: would be ideal for using something like a segue, particularly
Speaker 1: if you're in a city that has a actually a
Speaker 1: fairly healthy pedestrian population, healthy and is in there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there walking, not necessarily that
Speaker 1: they're all in great health. Atlanta not so great for pedestrians,
Speaker 1: I would say, I mean pedestrians. We have very few
Speaker 1: sidewalks outside of our main metropolitan areas. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's the other thing with the segways is that I
Speaker 1: think that the concept was always for them to be
Speaker 1: secondary to a car, to like have a car and
Speaker 1: then have the segway in it, and you know, park
Speaker 1: the car somewhere and then take the segway out and
Speaker 1: go about your business. Right, or if you happen to live, like,
Speaker 1: you know, two miles away from a market, then you
Speaker 1: can just take for that. Sure. But you know, but
Speaker 1: when these units cost over five grand to pop, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they weigh almost a hundred pounds, then you know
Speaker 1: that's it's not easy to carry them around. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's one of me. So that's you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, Like okay, So anyway, I'm just depressed now
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking about how much weight I need to
Speaker 1: lose before I come close to being a segway. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, there there are a lot of There
Speaker 1: are a lot of reasons. I think that that explained
Speaker 1: why the segue did not become the thing of the future.
Speaker 1: It was certainly an incredible innovation. It was a really interesting,
Speaker 1: uh engineering feat. I've seen similar products come out that
Speaker 1: are based on the same general principles as the Segue.
Speaker 1: Some of them are things like motorized roller skates or
Speaker 1: a motorized skateboard kind of thing. Um, Honda came out
Speaker 1: with a unicycle looking sort of thing that that that
Speaker 1: works on a similar basis. And I think that Toyota,
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't come out with it. It's in prototype.
Speaker 1: I've seen him. Let's see us. I've seen a motorized Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's a motorized unicycle that you stand on and again,
Speaker 1: just like with the segue, you would lean forward to
Speaker 1: indicate that you want to move forward. And I remember
Speaker 1: hearing that it takes about thirty to forty five minutes
Speaker 1: to kind of acclimate yourself to it to where you
Speaker 1: can comfortably maneuver through an environment. Say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a giant conference room that's filled with hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people like cees just high example, if I had
Speaker 1: been on there, I would have probably mangled at least
Speaker 1: forty or fifty people before I Actually, no, let's be fair,
Speaker 1: I probably would have run over myself. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know hypothetically, and these things only go twelve
Speaker 1: point five miles an hour. Um that that is on purpose.
Speaker 1: They have a speed limit her in them. That's that's
Speaker 1: the issue that caused the recall back in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: The speed limitter was was malfunctioning. Um yeah, so I
Speaker 1: mean it's you know, there were definitely ideas to uh
Speaker 1: to really uh to really uh to to make it
Speaker 1: as useful as possible and limit the possible malfunctions or
Speaker 1: injuries that can happen when people start using a technology
Speaker 1: that as a brand new mode of transportation. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously have to take those things into account. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff. I
Speaker 1: can always tell that they're a big hit by the
Speaker 1: amount of eye rolling that Tari gives me as she
Speaker 1: listens to my puns. If you guys have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics for tech Stuff, let me know. Let
Speaker 1: me know on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for us
Speaker 1: at both of those locations is text stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tex
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