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Originally Posted by nycpunk
it appears to me that the guy in the picture is using its wider surface to position himself on it in a diagonal way with his legs farther apart(like on a skateboard) which may allow for the stability that was lost by taking the handle bars off to be regained, and even if this thing turns out to be nothing more than an RC transporter like Cuog suggested as long as they don't try to sell it as a Segway i think its still awesome and may turn out to be more affordable than Segways or dare i say possibly more practical due to its small size. (I'm not saying Dean's invention isn't great, because it is. I'm just saying that we cant all get so wrapped up in FIRST and forget that GP doesn't exist as much in the real world, besides if you look at it from an Adam Smith point of view competition leads to improvements and benefits the people)
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AFAIK, Dean already owns the patent rights to that handle-less Segway. This picture was from one of Dean's patent applications, and covers alternate designs of the Segway. As you can see, none of these have handle bars. Figure 11 is very similar to the handlebar-less "Segway" in this thread. This isn't about GP, its about ideas and rights. Dean has repeatedly said that ideas are what will drive the future, so he sure is not going to let someone else "steal" (even if unintentional) his ideas while his patents are still valid. Although GP is not the law of the land outside of FIRST, patent rights are.
