Ginger museum - Segway development info for Neelix

[IndyFIRSTengineer]

Hey Chris,

From your post in the "Segway on John Ratzenberger's Made in America" thread:quote:Originally posted by Neelix

... I wish that they'd let us take pics of the old prototypes back when we got to see them at Segway Fest. Those were so cool. The old stuff really intrigues me, I wish that I could find out what all the differences in the machines were, why they changed things, that sort of information. The development of things is something that's very interesting to me...I got a few photos of the banner/poster on the wall at SegFest '04. You should be able to zoom in enough to read all of the details.

http://img76.exs.cx/img76/4702/IMG_0212.jpg
http://img76.exs.cx/img76/8281/IMG_0214.jpg
http://img76.exs.cx/img76/5912/IMG_214.jpg

Stuart Bloom - Rolls-Royce Corporation
FIRST Team 1018 - Pike High School "RoboDevils"

“Who goes out and says, ‘You have a better probability of winning the state lottery than making a nickel in professional sports. And by the way, last year two million exciting technical jobs went unfilled in this country because you weren't there to take that job. And it pays you 10 times as much as flipping burgers, and it's fun and it's exciting and you get to create things and build things and help make the world a better place and help make yourself a better living.’ Who tells them this?”
Dean Kamen, founder - FIRST Robotics

[rethin]

Wow, great pics.

Thanks

Rethin

[Neelix]

*right clicks - saves as*

Thanks Stuart!

-------------------------
Fear not, for even though I come from the Forbidden City, I surely do not agree with the rules.
Chris Knight

[woodenapple]

I remember seeing a few people take pictures of that banner at SegFest 04, including me. I spent quite a bit of time standing in front of it - not only reading over the text, but studying the pictures to see what changed as the design evolved.

Rodney

May all your days be Segway days!

[Segway City]

Hmmm, I can't get them to display.... Were they taken down?

[mattk]

Ginger had no software? How did that work?

-MattK

[IndyFIRSTengineer]

Looks like the links are still OK to me ... try right-click, then "save as"

Stuart Bloom - Rolls-Royce Corporation
FIRST Team 1018 - Pike High School "RoboDevils"

“Who goes out and says, ‘You have a better probability of winning the state lottery than making a nickel in professional sports. And by the way, last year two million exciting technical jobs went unfilled in this country because you weren't there to take that job. And it pays you 10 times as much as flipping burgers, and it's fun and it's exciting and you get to create things and build things and help make the world a better place and help make yourself a better living.’ Who tells them this?”
Dean Kamen, founder - FIRST Robotics

[JohnM]

quote:Originally posted by mattk

Ginger had no software? How did that work?

Probably pretty crude. Think of a simple electro-mechanical theromostat, that just turns the furnance on or off depending on warping of a bi-metalic strip. No fine control, but it gets your room temp to hover around a set point.

Replace the thermostat's strip with a gyro that turns the power on or off to the motors depending on the amount of tilt. No fine control probably, just full power in either forward or reverse until the gyro is level and power is cut. And no steering, just forward and reverse. Betcha it was a wee bit scary to ride till they got it fine tuned.

JohnM
If riding 2 hours is fun, then riding 20 hours is 10 times more fun.
RUSA #235

[SegwayUtah]

quote:Originally posted by mattk

Ginger had no software? How did that work?

Probably much like Blackwell's balancing platform -- except his is a little more advanced than Ginger and probably significantly less advanced than Sybil (the multple personality C0 Segway HT prototype).

Chris

[rethin]

Its proberbly an analog control system simliar to an inverted pendulum (found in most college level control systems courses).
Check out an example if you like
http://www.ecpsystems.com/controls_pendassc.htm

Analog control systems can be very sophisticated. There are very complicated and sensitive systems used in industies everywhere.
The example of thermostat is a good example of a feedback system, albit just a little crude(system, not analogy). Crude because it only uses the proportinal part of a PID controller system. It does care about how far you are from the set point or how quickly you are approaching the setpoint (the ID part of PID).
See this for an example of PID controllers.
http://www.expertune.com/tutor.html

So I don't know what kind of control system Giner had. Butit proberbly uses a system much more advanced than a thermostat and proberbly was capable of much more than full forward and backward and proberbly had no oscilation around the set point.

Rethin

[GadgetmanKen]

Nice pics of the poster Stu. What I find interesting in the first pic of Ginger and Sybil is that the batteries are located vertically between the legs. Like I have mentioned where spare batteries could have been positioned. I wonder why they chose not to place them there in the final versions?

"Wouldn't it be cool, if?...is like Folgers in my cup"