Quote:
Originally Posted by Gihgehls
He CLEARLY said that when you grasp the brake lever the software is still fully in control of the braking. This includes automatically leaning back and using whatever electromechanical device is employed to control the wheel's speed, be it motor or disc brake or both. The rider at no point has directly control of the brake mechanism.
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Yes, he said that, but if you lean forward and press a lever, it is not the same as leaning back.
One of the regular complaints about the segway software is that so much potential speed and power is saved for emergency. I would guess from what has been published, close to 50% of all available power from the motors is kept in reserve to regain balance in emergency situations.
This is with the operating process that necessitates leaning back to brake. If the process allows you to lean forward while braking, it would be similar to pushing both feet down on the accelerator and brake pedal at the same time.
Most all devices that use a lever to engage the brake, also engage a lever to accelerate. It is not difficult to mechanically link these two, so that the engagement of the brake either dis-engages the accelerator, or negates it. Most drive by wire cars do just this.
Again, to accelerate by leaning forward, but brake by pulling a lever, you are using two distinct processes, and it is far harder to have one out-do the other.
The end result is that an even higher percentage of total performance must therefore be reserved for emergency braking. This seems wasteful and inefficient to me.