When Segway Scooters Die

[Solitaire]

Following three reports of riders falling off because of a power problem, all Segway scooters were recalled on Friday for a software upgrade.

One of those who fell down sustained head injuries that needed stitches, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and the company said in a joint statement.

A Very Short Article On The Recall

 

[arcticpenguin]

I am going to quote a couple previous posts of mine

I am not a Segway fan. They spent umpteen million (I think I read US$100 million but I don't feel like looking it up) to engineer the thing to balance on two wheels. Whereas engineering on a 3rd or 4th wheel would have cost what, about $87.14?

Like Schplurg I am also interested in failure modes. What happens to your Segway when it has a loose battery connection? The failure modes do not look good.

 

[Silicon]

Ah, the uninformed Arctic Penguin.


You have no idea what you're talking about. How long have you owned your segway?

I've had mine for months now, and the shutdown mode works very well, if you follow the instructions written in the safety manual.

In VERY VERY isolated circumstances (that I've not hit in thousands of miles of travel), a glitch showed up in the software that miscalculated the amount of power available to the system. If you disregarded the safety manual, you'd fall on your butt.

Here's the glitch:

If a rider was on the Segway while it was slowing to a stop and warning the rider to get off because of depleted batteries,(controlled-shut-down mode) in some circumstances if the rider tried to agressively accelerate instead of getting off the beeping warning blinking segway, the Segway wouldn't have enough power to keep the rider upright.

So they are upgrading the software so the asshats won't hurt themselves. It's a 10 minute software upgrade.