A hint of a uniwheeled Segway?

[charmed]

Re-posted from a post by Seeker in the 'Stirling Family' thread:

"Charmed,

Am I reading this right, is this Saffo guy suggesting that the one wheeled Segway version that you've been talking
about, and looking forward to, has already been built by Kamen ?


Saffo says the technology allowed Kamen to even develop a one-wheeled Segway -- your feet are on either side of
the wheel. "The one-wheel version turns on a hill much better. I'll tell you who would be really stoked by that is
the Army. You could actually create a one-wheel all-terrain vehicle with half-a-kilowatt of power."

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-04-03/cover_news.html"

I've always been surprised that there hasn't been more interest in discussing what I consider to be a natural progression of Segway's technology- a single-wheeled version. The article above, from April 2002, makes brief reference to one. I'm not sure what official info this Paul Saffo is privy to, but he echoes my own thoughts on the subject.

[Casey]

Several of the patent pictures show one wheel devices. I have them on my HD, but they won't upload because they are in the tiff format. I will need to convert them to jpeg to post them in "Photos". I don't have an application on this OS to do that at the moment.

I am at a loss to see how one wheel would attain the see-saw motion though. Unless it was a split wheel, which in effect would be the same as two sandwiched half wheels.

Frank

[n/a]

Thanks for reposting that article charmed. There is a lot of interesting stuff there, not the least the uniwheeled Segway u are enamored with. We have ofcourse seen the patents that include the uniwheel as an embodiment, But Saffo hints that they have a uniwheel working prototype. One thing I wonder about is why the uniwheel model will use so much less power?

[baantjer]

quote:Originally posted by Lawrence

...
One thing I wonder about is why the uniwheel model will use so much less power?

I missed that part, where does it say that the uniwheeled model uses less power?

[Seeker]

Hi Baantjer,

The article mentions 1/2 a kilowatt of power, as the power usage of the uniwheeled version. Can anyone tell us how this compares with the consumer version Segway ?

I wonder if the fact that the 2 wheeled version uses a separate motor to drive each wheel, would mean that the 2 wheeled version would use more power than a 1 wheeled version.

Seeker

[Casey]

Someone corect me if my memory fails me on this. But I think the figures for the Segway say it has two 250 Watt motors. That is 500 Watt, or 1/2 KW. All the same.

Frank

[Casey]

Thanks, but if my memory doesn't fail me I can convert them when I go back to my other OS. I am running very little on this OS to speed it up for forum browsing. I have 16 saved tiffs from patents, so it would be quite an email.



Frank

[Casey]

I have tried to upload the tiff files and found out I can't. But I will convert them. The only thing I'm not sure of is how many I can upload. It seems it said something about a limit of 3, but I will recheck.

Frank

[Casey]

quote:Originally posted by Casey

Someone corect me if my memory fails me on this. But I think the figures for the Segway say it has two 250 Watt motors. That is 500 Watt, or 1/2 KW. All the same.

Frank

Ok, if nobody else will call me on this, I'll have to do it myself.

I did a check, and found out the Segway has two, two HP motors. That is just under 1.5 KW each, or a total of almost 3 KW. For the uniwheel to use only one sixth the power of a regular Segway suggests it must be much smaller and lighter, or it's performance would be very poor. And that doesn't account for the fact that the rider would weigh the same. Those figures don't add up for me.

Frank

[Seeker]

Hi Casey,

Could some of the figures relate to input Wattage, and others to output Wattage, or something like that ?

Seeker