If It Has a Motor: The Honda U3-X

[rake60]

OK, you all know how easily I'm captivated by anything with a motor.

This is cool!

It is a prototype "Personal Mobility Device" being developed by Honda.
It's a pretty simple machine in theory. All it does is maintain it's own balance.
Park yourself on it and lean in any direction. The 20 pound machine moves in that
direction to maintain it's balance. In the mean time it is moving you in whatever direction.

At $660 and a total run time of 1 hour on a full charge, and a top speed of 4 MPH, I won't
be rushing out to buy one, BUT it is still pretty cool!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuIJRsAuCHQ[/ame]

Can't imagine what might happen if you ran over a groundhog on the road at 4 MPH on that!
Rof}

Rick

 

[Blogwitch]

I'm just wondering Rick,

Why in this world would fit, young healthy people like that, not want to walk?

I can see them in ten years time as 240 pound lollipops. Little scrawny legs with a lump of fat on the top.

In fact, about 30 years ago, I wrote a short sci-fi story for an english exam I was doing, and it was all about things like this, where the whole modern world ended up where they couldn't walk, just like the wobbly toys that can't fall over, and were overun by the lean third world countries, who were making all these labour saving machines.

The mind boggles at such thoughts.


John