What is segway

All you have to do is lean in the direction you want to go, and your Segway takes you there. And don't worry, it takes care of the balancing-on-two-wheels part. The Segway is a two wheeled, self-balancing electric vehicle invented by Dean Kamen.

It is produced by Segway Inc. Computers and motors in the base of the device keep the Segway upright when powered on with balancing enabled. Users lean forward to go forward, lean back to go backward, and turn by using a "Lean Steer" handlebar, leaning it left or right.

Segways are driven by electric servos at up to 20 kilometres per hour. Gyroscopic sensors are used to detect tilting of the device, which indicates a departure from perfect balance. Motors driving the wheels are commanded as needed to bring the Segway back into balance. Segway Technology. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. Word of the Day goodwill. Blog Outsets and onsets! Read More. November 08, To top. Sign up for free and get access to exclusive content:.

The Segway is a self-balancing electric scooter that you steer by leaning in the direction you want to go. It's used by commuters, patrol officers, tour groups, and also as a platform for mobile robots. The Segway i2 self-balancing scooter. Photo: Segway A Chinese policeman rides a Segway. Photo: iStockphoto Videos Rolling on a Segway. Video: Segway Using Segway-based robots as shooting targets. Video: Segway Dean Kamen on the Segway, and the hype. Rate this robot's appearance Creepy.

Sales started the next year amid great hype and speculation about its potential to transform personal transportation. Unlike a car , the Segway only has two wheels -- it looks something like an ordinary hand truck -- yet it manages to stay upright by itself.

To move forward or backward on the Segway, the rider just leans slightly forward or backward. To turn left or right, the rider turns the right handlebar forward or backward. This balancing act is the most amazing thing about the Segway, and it is the key to its operation. To understand how this system works, it helps to consider Kamen's model for the device -- the human body. If you stand up and lean forward, so that you are out of balance, you probably won't fall on your face.

Your brain knows you are out of balance, because fluid in your inner ear shifts, so it triggers you to put your leg forward and stop the fall. Instead of falling, you walk forward, one step at a time. The Segway does pretty much the same thing, except it has wheels instead of legs, a motor instead of muscles , a collection of microprocessors instead of a brain and a set of sophisticated tilt sensors instead of an inner-ear balancing system.

Like your brain, the Segway knows when you are leaning forward. To maintain balance, it turns the wheels at just the right speed, so you move forward.

On September 14, , Segway, Inc. Several riders have fallen off of their Segways and suffered injuries like broken teeth and a broken wrist.

Segway is offering a free software upgrade that will fix the problem, which is available at Segway dealerships and service centers [ ref ]. At its most basic, the Segway is a combination of a series of sensors, a control system and a motor system.

In this section, we'll look at each of these elements. The primary sensor system is an assembly of gyroscopes. A basic gyroscope is a spinning wheel inside a stable frame. A spinning object resists changes to its axis of rotation, because an applied force moves along with the object itself.

If you push on a point at the top of a spinning wheel, for example, that point moves around to the front of the wheel while it is still feeling the force you applied. As the point of force keeps moving, it ends up applying force on opposite ends of the wheel -- the force balances itself out. See How Gyroscopes Work to learn more. Because of its resistance to outside force, a gyroscope wheel will maintain its position in space relative to the ground , even if you tilt it. But the gyroscope's frame will move freely in space.

By measuring the position of the gyroscope's spinning wheel relative to the frame, a precise sensor can tell the pitch of an object how much it is tilting away from an upright position as well as its pitch rate how quickly it is tilting. A conventional gyroscope would be cumbersome and difficult to maintain in this sort of vehicle, so the Segway gets the same effect with a different sort of mechanism.

Segways use a special solid-state angular rate sensor constructed using silicon. This sort of gyroscope determines an object's rotation using the Coriolis effect on a very small scale. Simply put, the Coriolis effect is the apparent turning of an object moving in relation to another rotating object. For example, an airplane traveling in a straight line appears to turn because the Earth is rotating underneath it. A typical solid-state silicon gyroscope consists of a tiny silicon plate mounted on a support frame.

The silicon particles are moved by an electrostatic current applied across the plate. The particles move in a particular way, which causes the plate to vibrate in a predictable manner.

But when the plate is rotated around its axis that is, when the Segway rotates in that particular plane , the particles suddenly shift in relation to the plate. This alters the vibration, and the change is in proportion to the degree of rotation.

The gyroscope system measures the change in vibration, and passes this information on to the computer. In this way, the computer can figure out when the Segway is rotating along particular axes. Check out this site for more information on solid-state silicon gyroscopes. The Segway HT has five gyroscopic sensors, though it only needs three to detect forward and backward pitch as well as leaning to the left or right termed "roll". The extra sensors add redundancy, to make the vehicle more reliable.