From: brent.allsop@attbi.com
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 10:05:41 MST
spike said:
> Consider a good motorcycle brake: one can lock the front
> wheel. I good rider can actually lift that back wheel
> and hold it just above the ground. With its CG position
> about 45 degrees upward and aft from the front wheel contact
> patch, one can stop a bike at close to 1 G, at which time
> the wheel locks and the cotangent model breaks down. Looks
> to me like you would be lucky to get a third a G on a
> segway.
But this is a very unstable setup. Not only does the biker have to very
carefully control the brake, he also has to keep the back wheel from coming
forward from side to side. Only a very practiced stunt rider could keep such
an unstable system from going out of control. And even then you would loose it
on many occasions. How many takes do you think the stunt rider had to take
before getting it right in MI2?
But the Segue’s parallel wheelbase eliminates the side to side instability.
Leaving the “face plant” instability up to the computer control. I’m not sure
how they’ve designed the segue to handle in extreme “pulling back on the stick”
situations but theoretically one could pull back far enough to where one’s but
is just off the ground and the segue would have to brake extremely hard to
maintain balance in such situation.
I’m just thinking theoretically here, I’ve never tried one. It’d sure be fun
to try. But I bet a segue could have much better stopping ability than a
motorcycle.
Brent Allsop
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