New Trick -- Testing Traction

[Bob.Kerns]

This has a sort of "Why didn't I think of this before?" flavor -- so it may have been discussed to death ages ago. But I think it's worth noting...

This evening, Erika and I visited a friend on their houseboat. With me on my Segway, of course. It was raining. It was low tide, so the ramp down to their boat was quite steep, and wet, and a new aluminum ramp I hadn't tried before.

It struck me, I could actually test it before I committed myself. So I dismounted, and with the Seg in RBM, I let it down onto the ramp, and subjected it to "violent" (as violent as you can get without driving it out of RBM) motion up and down the ramp, with me standing safely at the head.

(Carefully NOT letting it get out of RBM, which could be awkward and might possibly lead to dropping it).

With as much acceleration as I could muster in RBM, there was no slippage. Since I wasn't planning on accelerating hard, I knew it would be safe, and I had no problem.

I took it right down onto the finger dock, but there are lots of places I wouldn't do that, where the docks are too tippy, or there's too much wave or wake motion to be safe.

[jgbackes]

I've always thought that for a boat, ship or RV the segway is the perfect addition for getting around while "parked"

[KSagal]

I would be nervous about posting or depending too much on the traction from a machine in RBM because of the weight and balance differences.

When a machine has no rider, the weight is below the axle, mostly, in that the batteries make a great pendulum weight. The machine balances pretty naturally, and has very small corrections to make.

When a machine has a rider, especially a tall rider who may not be too light, there is a large amount of weight way above the wheels, and any incline, out of balance condition, or corrections have got to include much more torque, to move the greater mass, that is farther from the axle.

Because of this, I believe that an empty machine on a wet ramp may act very differently than that same machine on that same ramp with a large man on it...

Just my opinion.

[Bob.Kerns]

I've always thought that for a boat, ship or RV the segway is the perfect addition for getting around while "parked"

I see a lot of drawbacks unless you leave it behind in storage. I used to live on a sailboat. While I can see ways of getting it aboard or ashore, they're all a lot of hassle, and I'd expect corrosion to be a problem as well. And stowing something that big and heavy and awkwardly shaped would be a huge problem.

The problems diminish with the size of the boat, however. With a big enough boat, you can comfortably have a fleet of them -- and might even need them aboard.

But houseboats are a different story. These are permanently-moored; many have been in one spot for decades. Still, space is at a premium.