Segway has obstacle in Japanese market
 

http://www.techgeek.com/subpage/inde...=998&item=1097


TOKYO -- A self-balancing scooter billed as a revolution in the way people travel could run into an obstacle in Japan, where a robotics professor wants recognition for inventing a nearly identical machine 15 years ago. The claim comes a little more than a month after U.S. inventor Dean Kamen unveiled the Segway Human Transporter and Segway LLC, the company founded to make and sell it, ending a year of speculation and secrecy over the invention that kept the high-tech world in thrall. "I'm not saying that they took the idea, but I want people to know that it existed before the Segway was developed," Kazuo Yamafuji, professor emiritus at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications, said. "I made this machine 15 years ago." More important, Yamafuji applied for a patent for his machine in 1987, which was granted in 1996. Legal experts say that while it may be difficult for Yamafuji or anyone else to challenge Dean Kamen's U.S. patent, the award-winning U.S. inventor could run into trouble if Segway decides to sell the scooter in Japan. With its densely packed cities and enthusiasm for high-tech gadgets, Japan could be an ideal market for Segway's machine. The motorized scooter, which went under the code names "Ginger" or "It" before it was revealed to the public, is a device Kamen says could transform urban landscapes, allowing people to zip over short distances instead of driving their cars. Users stand on a small platform between two wheels and hold on to a handle similar to that on a bicycle. Leaning forward moves the scooter forward, leaning back reverses course and turns are made by twisting the handle. While Yamafuji admits he never took his invention beyond the research phase, he insists that the basic ideas incorporated in the Segway scooter are the same: a computer processor to detect minute shifts in balance to keep the machine upright on two parallel wheels. "I call it a `parallel bicycle,"' said Yamafuji, a robotics scientist for more than 30 years who is semi-retired. "The Segway is essentially a motorized parallel bicycle, with wheels side by side instead of front to back. If they claim that they did it first, it wouldn't be fair to me or my university. We did the research." But when asked whether he was considering legal action, Yamafuji said: "I will not fight this." An 18-inch-high parallel bicycle made by Yamafuji and his research team 15 years ago has the same two-wheel arrangement as the Segway scooter, but is too small for a rider and lacks a platform. The upper section is a rectangular box set at an angle to hold motors, processors and a pendulum that helps maintain balance. A small rod attached to one of the wheels rests against the ground to sense the tilt of the machine, a contrast to the Segway, which uses gyroscopes to mimic the human ear's sense of balance. The similarities may be enough, said Joseph A. Calvaruso, a litigation partner at intellectual property law firm Morgan & Finnegan LLP in New York, to make it difficult for Segway to sell the machine in Japan. "Kamen could have a problem in Japan if the Japanese patent challenges any one of the claims on his patent," Calvaruso said. Segway said it is still evaluating plans for specific countries and has no details on strategy outside of the U.S., according to Senior Vice President Gary Bridge. In the U.S., Calvaruso said, it would be very difficult for Yamafuji or anyone else to invalidate Kamen's U.S. patent. That's because Kamen's 1999 patent has a reference to Yamafuji's Japan patent application, meaning Kamen's machine was nonetheless deemed worthy of a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "We're aware of Professor Yamafuji's work," Bridge said, but added that "it is important to note that the technology underlying the Segway Human Transporter is a significant advance over prior technologies." Yamafuji was granted a second patent in 1998 for a four-wheel version of his machine that expands on his original invention. The later version has a counterweight that would allow users to use a switch to move forwards and backwards without having to lean. "With this version a person can stand on the unit and push a button to move," Yamafuji said. Another prototype climbs stairs. The ideal form for the machine's wheels, Yamafuji says, is to have a sphere with built-in mechanics that can go in any direction from a standing start. While none of his prototypes were built with space for a human operator, Yamafuji said his former students developed usable versions for research at the corporate level. A working human-operated scooter was built by one of Yamafuji's students for Sony Corp., and another built a scooter on a sphere that balanced itself like a unicycle for Honda Motor Co. Yamafuji has created other machines, including a robot that replicates the quick twist that helps falling cats land on their feet. "The U.S. Air Force was interested in our cat-twist robot," he said. Yamafuji said he was eager to meet Kamen and share ideas. "It is a matter of pride for me, not money." "I would hand over my patent for one dollar if Mr. Kamen admitted that we were first."

that's very interesting.

by the way, do you guys think that the first heavier-than-air airplane that could take off and fly was the Wright brothers airplane?
It wasn't. It was Santos Dummont's airplane.
Now guess where Santos Dummont is from.

Do you think one day someone will admit that we were first?


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Rodrigo Ribeiro
#383 - The Brazilian Machine

Through-out history there have been many people who have laid claim to inventing something.

I have been told by people that Edison didn't invent the lightbulb...Just for example.

But, like many things, many people have had similar ideas and invented similar tools, machines, etc.

The paralelle bicycle is just another example.

In the end, who sells their product comes down to whoever markets it better (I'm reminded of the Sony Beta, vs the Panasonic VHS - the Sony was a better product, but wasn't marketed as well, so the VHS took hold).

Just another brick in the wall ;)

Wrong! The Wright brothers flew in 1903, Dumont flew in 1906. Dumont may have been the first in Europe, but the Wright brothers were three years earlier. Can you guess were the Wright Brothers are from?:p

P.S. Dumont lived in France.

OHIO!

Edison didn't invent the lightbulb, he invented a longer lasting one with tungston as the fillament. Before that you could use them from 1 hour to a couple of days and they would burn out. He just improoved the ides :)

Oh hush you know what I meant :-P

He is GENERALLY credited w/ inventing it.

He is credited with inventing the first truly usable light bulb, not the first one.

Who really invents anything completely new? Everything has prior art. Watt didn't invent the steam engine, he just built the first PRACTICAL one. (btw, Dean bought the Watt model from the Henry Ford museum, and put it in his living room) Similarly for Edison, the Wrights, Brunel, Marconi, Zworykin, Wanlass ....

(The last bunch I'll let you look up..)

But the practical thing, the one that works, is generally where we assign the "inventor" status. So Edison for the light bulb, and Telsa for the whole elctric distribution system. The Wrights for the airplane, and Oberth/Goddard for the liquid fueled rocket.

The segway is basically an inverted pendulum, a system that almost any undergraduate who takes dynamics will solve the equations of motion for. Dean's invention is unique in the fact that he plops a human on top of it, the human leans forward and backward to control it, and the machine is balanced using five gyroscopes (three for three axes of rotation, two for intermediate axis error checking), and the output of these gyros is fed into multiple chips running feedback control loops to keep the thing standing up. Plenty of people have come up with the idea of putting a human on top of one of these before, including my dynamics professor last semester. He showed me a project proposal he did in the 1970s, it's the same idea. But this was for only one axis. He even showed the project proposal to Dean a couple weeks ago when he gave a lecture at Cornell! Dean quickly was able to explain why the segway is so much more complex.

My point is a lot of professors have come up with idea or similar ideas... Very few own patents on anything, and those who do, the idea is for only one axis (forward & backwards), while the segway can turn on any radius and on sloped surfaces. The gyro technology and integrated feedback control boards (15 years ago, the technology on the segway did not exist, and what did was too slow or too big to fit on a segway), or even the way the machine is controlled by the human or turned on, makes the system unique enough to deserve a patent.

I don't suspect Dean will have any trouble with patents. His trouble lies with lawmakers, and making it legal to ride segways. From what he said here a couple weeks ago, it's now legal in about half of the US states to ride on the sidewalk.

Another one of these, Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone either. Antonio Meucci invented it (a Canadian) but, he didn't have the $250 dollars to place the patent. So Bell stole the invention, and patented it.