The Day of the Self-balancing Transporter arrived almost two decades ago this month, when Dean Kamen revealed the Segway Human Transporter on 'Good Morning America' on 4 December 2001.
Dean Kamen says live: "It's sort of like you put on a pair of magic sneakers, and you think to go forward or backwards..."
Watch the video of the live unveiling here on YouTube (the curtain lifts 20 seconds in).
The revolution is taking a little longer than expected....perhaps we can say that the day has only just begun?
About a decade ago, we wrote this article about a tipping point that happened with attitudes towards the Segway Personal Transporter (nee Human Transporter - the name changed in 2006). Champions such as Justin Bieber and Kylie Jenner heralded a turning point that began with the young (revolutions always begin amongst the young). Just a year or two later the overnight success of the "Hoverboard" craze cemented the concept of self-balancing machines with a combination of fun and risk - two "hot buttons" for kids - and giving kids something they could do with ease yet their parents struggled to master. With hindsight, it was genius, really.
Next came the explosion of interest in e-scooters. A first this was driven by "sharing scooters" from Lime and Bird (primarily powered by models manufactured by Segway-Ninebot), and followed soon after by consumer purchases (again, models manufactured by Segway-Ninebot were soon taking the largest market share worldwide).
It is always difficult predicting the future. It is not just what technologies will eUPDATE, but the factors that determine when they will be taken up and adopted. Sometimes, multiple technology mini-revolutions are required before a particular technology can succeed. For example, would e-scooters have been so successful if there hadn't already been at least some level of cycle lane/cycle path/shared path infrastructure in place in most of the cities across the Western world?
We wrote a series of Segway-centric articles about "Predicting the future" with a Kiwi perspective - check them out here:
Auckland in Fifty Years
Uni-Pod predates UNI-CUB by 33 years
In the future we will drive standing up
And so while it is a fact that self-balancing personal transporters are yet to take over the world, in less than 20 years Segway has transformed from a well-known niche product to a well-known consumer brand.
The brand already spans many personal transportation product types. Primarily, the Segway-Ninebot of today is focused on transportation devices that travel distances between 2km and 20km.
Broadly, Segway-Ninebot currently produces products in the mobility and logistics sectors. More specifically, the foci are on:
(i) SMART MOBILITY with a range of Intelligent Mobility products (including e-scooters, self-balancing personal transporters, mopeds/scooters, and off-road vehicles to launch next year), Mobility Service (Segway Discovery delivering e-scooter ride-sharing and Segway Tours) and Mobility Data (supporting these products and services).
(ii) SMART LOGISTICS with a range of Smart Service Robot Systems (such as the Segway Delivery robots) and Robot Service supported by Robot Data.
These interactions can be visualised in the following diagrams:
Let's see where the next 20 years takes us!
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