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NEW YORK — It's called the Segway Human Transporter, but the Pentagon is drafting the two-wheeled scooter as part of a plan to develop battlefield robots that think on their own and communicate with troops. The program is still in the research phase, so the self-balancing scooters aren't expected to report to boot camp anytime soon. So far, university researchers armed with Pentagon funding have programmed Segway robots that can open doors, avoid obstacles, and chase soccer balls -- all without human control. Researchers say potential applications for the robots include performing search missions on the battlefield, transporting injured soldiers...

Recall Alert U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Office of Information and Public Affairs Washington, DC 20207 September 26, 2003 CPSC, Segway LLC Announce Voluntary Recall to Upgrade Software on Segway™ Human Transporters The following product safety recall was conducted by the firm in cooperation with the CPSC. Name of Product: Segway Human Transporter (HT) Units: Approximately 6,000 Manufacturer: Segway LLC of Manchester, New Hampshire Hazard: Under certain operating conditions, particularly when the batteries are near the end of charge, some Segway HTs may not deliver enough power, allowing the rider to fall. This can happen if the rider speeds up...

Gov't Recalls All Segway ScootersThe one-person, battery-powered Segway scooter was first unveiled in December 2001. (Courtesy Segway) By Jonathan D. Salant Associated Press Writer Friday, September 26, 2003; 1:14 PM The maker of the Segway Human Transporter has agreed to recall the motorized scooters because riders have been injured falling off when its batteries are low. The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall Friday, saying that three people had been injured. One suffered a head wound and needed stitches. The recall involves about 6,000 of the single-rider, two-wheeled scooters that can travel up to 12 mph. The scooter uses...

WASHINGTON - The maker of the Segway Human Transporter has agreed to recall the motorized scooters because riders have been injured falling off when its batteries are low. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (news - web sites) announced the recall Friday, saying that three people had been injured. One suffered a head wound and needed stitches. The recall involves about 6,000 of the single-rider, two-wheeled scooters that can travel up to 12 mph. The scooter uses gyroscopes to keep it upright, making it less likely to fall or be knocked over. The Segway was unveiled in December 2001 to much...

<p>It took 6 sets of batteries and three drivers, but a Segway scooter made it to the top of New England's tallest peak.</p> <p>The scooter climbed Mouut Washignton's auto road in about two and one half hours Wednesday.</p> <p>The standup scooter, invented by Manchester's Dean Kamen and manufactured in Beford, was the first Segway to make it to the top of the 6,288 foot mountain in 7.6 miles.</p>

The first, known Segway sting operation has gone down in New York with a 24-year-old student being arrested on felony scooter theft charges. Yili Wang entered a Starbucks in Queens, hoping a Segway expert he met on the Internet could help get the gizmo going, according to court papers unearthed by The Smoking Gun. Wang apparently forgot to ask about the keys for the machine when he purchased it for the, uh hem, bargain price of $75 off a man in East Harlem. To Wang's surprise, the Segway expert was cooperating with NYPD detectives. Officers stormed into the coffee shop...

It was rumoured to be powered by a washing machine motor, was lusted after by pre-adolescent schoolboys and risked vanishing under a heavy goods vehicle without the driver noticing. When it was unleashed on an unsuspecting public in 1985, the Sinclair C5 was the last word in futuristic transport. Ten months, and £6m of investment, later it was consigned to the commercial scrapheap. Now its inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair, is working on a "C6" - a top-secret follow-up to the ill-fated C5, to be unveiled next year. Sir Clive broke the news of his intriguing new invention while road testing...

<p>It's the NYPD's newest weapon against crime - just don't get caught on one yourself. The strange-looking Segway Human Transport - which retails for nearly $5,000 - is now being used by the Finest as part of a 60-day trial to determine "if they are feasible on a big-city force," a department spokesperson said.</p>

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For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. OTTAWA (CP) - As Canada Post teeters on the brink of a nation-wide strike, the Crown corporation is experimenting with a new two-wheeled invention to boost productivity among letter carriers. But the union representing workers at the post office says the idea will never catch on. John Fehr of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers says postal managers are spinning their wheels if they think they can increase productivity or save money by using the Segway. Canada Post received delivery of seven or eight Segway "human transport" vehicles this week, The...

President Bush meant to fall off his Segway. Oh, I'm sure of it. What we've got here is a clever conspiracy -- a pre-emptive strike to save the oil industry from a technology that could sap its power. Over the weekend, while on vacation, Bush looked like Chevy Chase doing a Gerald Ford imitation as he stepped onto the platform of a Segway personal transportation scooter and went flying right off.

Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger"HBSWK Pub. Date: Jun 16, 2003 The story behind Dean Kamen's Segway scooter, and his combustive meeting with the kingpins of Apple and Amazon. Excerpt from Code Name Ginger. by Steve KemperSteve Kemper was given complete behind-the-scenes access to Dean Kamen and the Segway design team during development of the much-hyped "human transporter." The result: A new book, Code Name Ginger. Here's an excerpt. -Ed. Evidently, he's always late, said Aileen Lee, John Doerr's associate. It was almost 8:30 A.M., half an hour after the meeting was supposed to start, and everyone in the...

Whatever your political stripes, it was the kind of photo at which you couldn’t help but snicker. Virtually every newspaper in the country yesterday ran the blurry photo press photographers captured of President George W. Bush, the leader of the free world, taking a tumble off a Segway — the made-in-New Hampshire innovation whose very selling point is its self-balancing operation. The President and his siblings, according to published reports, bought the device as a gift for their dad, the former President George H.W. Bush. A Segway spokesman told the Boston Globe that Segway inventor Dean Kamen of Bedford “decided...

<p>It would have been brilliant publicity: the leader of the free world, tooling around the family compound on a newfangled Segway scooter.</p> <p>If only the leader of the free world hadn't fallen off.</p> <p>On Thursday, President Bush failed to flip the ''on'' switch to the scooter he had purchased for his father, so the self-balancing mechanism didn't work. The president tumbled to the ground, unhurt. And news photographers, lingering outside the compound with long lenses, picked up grainy images of a presidential spill.</p>

MIDI - IF I FELL - first version If I fell down on my rear...would Dowd write a brand new smear Would she be mocking me? 'Cause I've heard that stuff before...from that Michael Douglas whore She does it with glee When I got on that Segway It seemed easy...but it just wasn't my day I pulled a Jerry Ford Wasn't chasing tail, you see That's how that predator Bill had hurt his knee With his pants down he ran...and he tumbled down the stairs, oh my Don't believe her...Hillary knows her guy Then I'm watching as my mom...

President tries his hands on a Segway Recreation part of Bush clan gathering at Maine estate President Bush and his father, former President Bush, ride on Segway scooters Thursday at the senior Bush's family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine. ASSOCIATED PRESS KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine, June 13 — President Bush opened a long Father’s Day weekend at his parents’ estate here, starting his R&R by riding a Segway — the standup, motorized scooter that resembles a push lawnmower.

President Bush has fallen vicitm to a weapon of minimal destruction-A Segway scooter.Bush took a nasty tumble on the fabled Segway, during a stay at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine ABC News reports.The President strode up to the space age scooter with a tennis racquet in hand, jumped on and then stumbled off the machine.Former President George H.W. Bush, celebrating his 79th birthday and the family dog showed off their Segway form, and the President was inspired to give the transporter another go.In January, the President rode inventor Dean Kamen's own Segway following a graduation speech. Bush was said...

The long-anticipated Segway is finally hitting the streets. After taking a test ride, all we can say is, Man, is this cool or what?Get used to it: Your kids are going to want one--and the urge might sneak up on you, too. The Segway Human Transporter may or may not change the face of urban transportation, save the environment and bring back Elvis, but it is a pisser to ride. Once the most-hyped secret invention since the A-bomb, code-named It and Ginger, the Segway sprang from the almost impossibly fertile mind of medical technology innovator Dean Kamen (who, it's worth...

I took a drive the other day through downtown Washington, D.C. I started at Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, and made my way up busy Connecticut Avenue to DuPont Circle. I continued down several streets to The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. I drove right through the lobby and into an elevator. Emerging on an upper floor, I sailed straight into the newsroom, maneuvering around cubicles and other obstacles.All along the way, people smiled and pointed and shouted encouragement and questions. Many asked for rides on the unusual vehicle I was driving, the new Segway Human...

<p>Inventor Dean Kamen promised that his superscooter would change the world. Then reality hit - hard.</p> <p>It would be premature to call the most talked about scooter in the history of humankind a huge bust. But the Segway has always been ahead of its time. For a decade, Dean Kamen fiddled and tested and tinkered with his invention, finally stage-managing its public unveiling in December 2001. He figured 2002 would be the year that the Segway Human Transporter launched a transportation revolution. Executives at companies like FedEx and Amazon.com would behold his high tech superscooter and wonder how they'd managed all these years without it. The US Postal Service and police departments across the nation would overwhelm the company with orders. And behind Segway's institutional customers, Kamen envisioned a long line of consumers from around the globe, checkbooks in hand. Maybe not all 6 billion of us would clamor at once to own one, but to him that seemed only a matter of time. After all, he was hawking the Segway as not merely a faster way to get from here to there but also a solution to urban congestion, air pollution, and dependency on fossil fuel. To prepare for the onslaught, Kamen leased a 77,000-square-foot factory near his home in Manchester, New Hampshire,and began puzzling through the logistics of running round-the-clock shifts. He hired scores of lobbyists, who spent much of last year trying to persuade state legislatures to rewrite their laws to permit his scooter to operate on city sidewalks. Before he'd sold a single one, Kamen blithely forecast that by the end of 2002, his enterprise would be stamping out 10,000 machines a week. Meanwhile, his best-known backer, venture capitalist John Doerr, predicted Segway would rack up $1 billion in sales faster than any company in history.</p>