I think, for more or less healthy people (being able to walk) it's the opposite what would be usefull, not sitting/being passive when we were once moving/using our muscles, but running/using muscles when we were once just sitting (more or less passively), I remember a standing desk with a running treadmill underneath as a nice example.
Segway by Honda
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Segway by Honda
#22Only practical -- if that! -- during dry days. I wouldn't want to see the state of my pants after using this on a wet pavement or street.
Re: Segway by Honda
#23I see this and I think about the fat people in Wall-E. What's wrong with using your legs?
I think Honda and Toyota are designing these devices for their growing elderly population in Japan.
It looks like it may be difficult to mount & balance yourself on this if your mobility is limited.
See the few seconds starting at 1:13 in the video.
Re: Segway by Honda
#24[deleted]
Re: Segway by Honda
#25I see this and I think about the fat people in Wall-E. What's wrong with using your legs?
I think Honda and Toyota are designing these devices for their growing elderly population in Japan.
Many elderly suffer from amyotrophia, I doubt this being usefull device, except for people which are disabled.
Re: Segway by Honda
#26Stupid for humans, maybe, but that'd be a cool mobility platform for robots.
I think this is the right way to approach this kind of technology.
Re: Segway by Honda
#27Like Paul Graham said in July 2009[1] The trouble with the Segway is that it makes you look smug. This thing will make you look even more so. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html
They pretty much always make me think of Dr Seuss. Perhaps once the technology is perfected, I can finally ride around on something fit for a Who.
Re: Segway by Honda
#28Note how they didn't let us hear how it sounds, but they visually suggested that one could tour an art gallery. I'm guessing it sounds almost as menacing as Big Dog.
Re: Segway by Honda
#29I'm not particularly impressed by the chair (references to both pg's Segway essay and the fat people in Wall.E come to mind), but I'm very interested in the omniwheel technology.
Imagine a wheelchair with one omnidirectional wheel instead of four. That'd make a world of difference for disabled people!
Re: Segway by Honda
#30I see this and I think about the fat people in Wall-E. What's wrong with using your legs?
I think Honda and Toyota are designing these devices for their growing elderly population in Japan.
While Honda, Toyota, and many companies in the Japanese robotics space do devote quite a lot of resources to thinking about the elderly population, a significant amount of the R&D work done is not done with the intent of being immediately productizable, but rather to do basic R&D and to fly the company flag. (See Asimo or, indeed, any robot which looks remotely like a human. Or the gigantic eight-legged spider robot who existed to wave a large fan at people that my tech incubator made, which existed to say "Look at us, we're capable of making a gigantic semi-autonomous eight legged robot with one functional limb which you could mount all sorts of things that are not cooling devices on.")