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