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Segway Inventor Turns To Environment
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Feb 17, 2006 02:14 PM
from the making-sure-we-still-have-one dept.
from the making-sure-we-still-have-one dept.
MBCook writes "CNN has an article in which they talk about Dean Kamen's latest inventions designed to provide water to rural villages. His goal is also to provide electricity and opportunities for entrepreneurship. From the article: 'Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water,' says Kamen. 'The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.'"
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Rumors (Score:4, Funny)
The rumormill says this time, "it" will consist of a rider on the segway carrying water bottles for the needy.
Re:Rumors (Score:5, Insightful)
His insulin pump was so brilliant, it looks obvious in hindsight (as the best inventions often do.)
Even the Segway, which is a silly gadget, makes a sort of sense. He was hoping to make a consumer product which (had it caught on with people) would apply economies of scale to his gyroscopic concepts, which would eventually make his stair-walking wheelchairs cheaper.
If he wants to turn his mad skillz to the problem of getting clean water to people, I gotta take off my hat.
Parent
Re:Rumors (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
The Segway was useless and overhyped. (Score:5, Interesting)
What he really seems to have meant was that for the device to sell, cities would have to be redesigned first. It's too heavy, fast, and unmaneuverable to ue on sidewalks, and it's too slow, unprotected, and unmaneuverable to use on streets. In essence, for the Segway to work, there'd have to be a completely new set of lanes for it. Additionally, it has all the problems of not protecting against the elements or having cargo space that prevent it from truly replacing cars. It's also far too expensive for the average person to justify the limited utility.
To sum up, it costs too much and can't be used in a majority of outdoor situations. It was overhyped when it had commercial flop written all over it. The Segway was brilliant example of promising the world and delivering nothing.
Snowmobiles and trail bikes at least have thrill-seeking element that the 12.5 MPH, no off-roading Segway did not.
Parent
Back to the topic of cheap Sterling engines- info (Score:5, Informative)
This has always been the trouble with Stirling engines. They seem simple until you actually try to make one that outputs a usable amount of power at some reasonable efficiency that doesn't cost a fortune. Many people have tried over the centuries, but so far it's always been a matter of picking which two of the three goals you want to fulfill. Dean Kamen has a nontrivial challenge ahead in trying for the Sterling hat-trick.
Don Lancaster's Blatant Opportunist #32 [tinaja.com]
Wikipedia - Problems with Stirling Engines: [wikipedia.org]
U.S. Patents: [uspto.gov]
6,862,883 Kamen, et al. Regenerator for a Stirling engine
Parent
Re:Rumors (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you mean Tesla:) Edison was more businessman than inventor.....
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Re:Rumors (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that mean Kamen's stealing all of his inventions from Nikola Tesla, too?
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Re:Rumors (Score:5, Informative)
People in it are the same height as people who can walk (Thus, he says, elimating a lot of prejudice.) and can go over bumps and up and down stairs. It doesn't take up any more horizontal space than a fat person.
Think of it as a segway made into a wheeled mech suit for the lower half of your body. And I read somewhere that he planned to slim it down once it caught on, so it would be basically leg braces with wheels at the end. People might come up to you, and you wouldn't even notice their legs aren't moving.
And this isn't some pipe dream, these things actually work, balancing the same way as the segway, with two wheels on each side, so they can flip forward and move you up or down stairs. They're just too expensive right now. He was hoping to use the same parts as the segway to cut the cost down,but that didn't work out, obviously.
Parent
Re:Rumors (Score:3, Interesting)
How about instead of just a $100 laptop, a $3 durable, easily fixable bicycle with add-on attchments for trailers? Or make some special type of wheel that, when used by a LOT of people in a common area, it paves a new road for them. Okay, now I'm thinking in Civilization terms(but those roads came in handy).
Gotta transport that water & stuff somehow.
Powered by cow dung! (Score:4, Funny)
market to first world countries too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:market to first world countries too! (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of farms (Score:5, Insightful)
Fisheries generate a lot of crap-filled water that generally gets pumped into (and pollutes) a local river.
Of course, this guy's invention would have to be scaled waaaaay up for farmers of any kind in the 1st world, since they have enormous plots of land compared to most farms in 3rd world & developing countries.
Still, Kudos to him, because he's right. Finding potable water is actually a greater problem than access to food in most of the 3rd world. However, the second you increase survival rates in those developing countries, you create a host of other problems as the population increases.
Countries are like ecosystems, once you fiddle with one variable, you usually have to deal with a rash of unintended consequences.
Parent
Stirling engines (Score:3, Insightful)
If this particular Stirling engine design is capable of being made in volume at a sensible price and is not simply an over-priced toy for rich yacht owners like the WhisperGen, it deserves to s
Re:market to first world countries too! (Score:4, Interesting)
Put together a long-lived 5kW "any liquid fuel" generator for $1500 right now. Use a Changfa 195 single-cylinder low speed diesel engine [utterpower.com] coupled to a 5kW ST generator [utterpower.com]. The motor and generator will run you about $1000 and you'll need couplers, adapters and to build a solid frame for mounting. This is much heavier than the typical Honda generator, but is less expensive, longer lasting (the Honda will last for about 600 hours, this should last for 20,000 to 50,000 hours between rebuilds), highly field maintainable, is quieter (1800 RPM one cylinder instead of 3600 RPM one or two cylinder), and runs on just about any fuel.
It ought to look a little like one of these rigs [utterpower.com] when you're done. You could also do a 10kW version using a bigger motor (1115) and generator head for about $2500.
Assuming we're still talking about farm use, plant cottonseed or rapeseed on 20 acres, buy a cheap oil press ($400, use the same motor and coupling to drive it) and run the genset on the oil. For even lower maintenance and possibly making a little money on the side (but more up front cost), make biodiesel from the oil first.
Regards,
Ross
Parent
Cow dung? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cow dung? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cow dung? (Score:3, Informative)
That's a lot of cow dung! (Score:3, Interesting)
Second time better? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Second time better? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Second time better? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes, it may make sense to base policies on cold math rather than the emotional level of individuals. For example, pesticides vs. malaria.
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Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Warning: skepticism ahead (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, I'm calling bullshit on this. Either you live in a swamp, or there's something wrong with your air conditioner. Buy a new one and save the world 1kWh/day instead of producing distilled water with electricity.
Secondly, you realize you're advocating air conditioning as a means of water purification for undeveloped nations? That's just goofy.
Then you say a "3 or 4 square meter" solar panel is "cheap to make". And, assuming such a thing would even run a single air conditioner, you'd need one for, say, every two African villagers. Let's say this contraption costs $2000, which is a conservative figure. To outfit 100 million Africans, you're talking about $100 billion. And then of course who knows how long the things will last and whether they will be immediately confiscated by warlords and diverted to people who are actually productive enough to afford solar panels.
So, by now we've gotten to the point where you've completely lost your mind. As further evidence, "with a lot less complexity... than a boiler-driven generator". Umm, okay.
Parent
Kamen back on track. Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Kamen's Segway fiasco was a mistake. Now he's back on track.
Segway = consumer iBot (wheelchair) (Score:3, Interesting)
Segway isn't a fiasco, it's an overhyped consumer toy. He probably makes a handsome profit from it.
Swell. (Score:5, Insightful)
So now, instead of a village in the Phillipines using relatively clean water that's been percalating through a forested area, they will just burn even more of the trees to power their water cleaners, resulting in even more of this [cnn.com] (which surviving local villagers said was due to illegal logging on the surrounding hills). Yes, TFA indicates that it's cow dung that will be burned... but that just means that the wholesome goodness of that dung is not going into agricultural fertilization, which means either shipping in artificial/processed fertilizers, or very inefficiently using more land for grazing and crop production... including cutting into forests (see above).
Yes, most of us "burn things" for clean water (to extract from a well, or to run a municipal water treatment facility), but things like this at the local level strike me as putting a tiny, tiny bandage on the symptom of a much larger problem. To wit: too many freakin' people in areas not developed enough to sustain them without very poor land use. I mean... a kilowatt? Between solar, and perhaps some of the village kids taking turns in a big hamster wheel, you could do that without burning more stuff. And, for someone who included the notion of improving the "leisure time" of poor villagers, he's not thinking too clearly about the delightful aroma that comes with 24x7 burning of cow dung.
Re:Swell. (Score:4, Insightful)
First, burning cow dung and other manure is a common practice throughtout the world. It is happening already. Now at least more people can get electricity from it instead of just heat and cooking.
A good thing about cow dung is that it is renewable. It is produced mostly through cows grazing on grass which grows back quickly. The CO2 that is produced will be used by that grass, a closed cycle, not like fossil fuels that add old carbon that had been in the ground for millions of years.The ash that is left over still has some utility as a fertilizer. And as I said before, it was probably already destined to be burned anyway for heat or cooking.
Now, to start complaining about things the parent post did not say and probably doesn't have a problem with but the parent post reminds me of similiar posts in the past from other people.
When Negroponte came up with the sub- $100 laptop idea everyone started bitching that what developing countries really need is clean water and cheap electricty. Now someone bitches about another person trying to solve that problem.
They say we shouldn't burn things for electricity. Use Solar power. Then someone will bitch that manufacturing solar cells uses energy and creates pollution so we should not make solar cells.
We want to reduce foreign imported oil, so someone suggests ethanol and people say that it uses natural gas and almost as much energy to create it than it delivers. Well it is true that the ferilizer to grow the corn uses chemicals derived from oil but beyond that the natural gas is just used to produce heat to create the alcohol. Anything other than natural gas can be substituted but right now natural gas is cheapest. If we wanted we could use cow manure or the alcohol that is created in the process. Ultimately we could eliminate any foreign oil or other fossil fuels from the process of creating the alcohol it is just for now it is cheaper not to.
Pretty much any solution to an energy problem gets bitched at. Hydoelectric dams rivers and hurts the fishies. Solar produce pollution during manufacture and is too expensive. Nuclear created radiactive waste. Wind generators are an eyesore, kill birds and make wooshing noises. Renewable resources like trees should not be cut down (even if they are farmed trees). It goes on and on.
There was a story here on slashdot about Bermuda using a generator sunk in the ocean running off the atlantic current. Some guy bitched that it would steal energy from the current and cause Europe to cool off.
I guess there is some part of human nature that wants to scream that humans are bad just for existing. It used to be a ignorant religious puritanical thing but more and more I hear it from the environmental granola crunchie types. Human beings and technology are bad. Anything we do is bad. Raising the standard of living of human beings is a bad goal.
The truth is that when people's standard of living goes up, their birth rate goes down. People in third world countries have 15 kids because due to water born diseases 8 or 10 of those will die before they finish growing up. The parents hope the rest will bring in some income by working. If we provide clean water, income and a higher standard of living (things this project is supposed to supply) then the birth rate will go down and the overall burden on the ecosystem will lessen. We should not keep attacking the people who try to fix these problems. We should spend our energy producing a better solution if their solutions are not good enough.
Parent
Re:Swell. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, please. It was survivors of the mudslide who said that the logging in the hills above their village is what caused the mudslide. That's not victim-blaming, that's quoting the people who said that they knew exactly what happened, and why. And yes, fewer poor, inefficient people does make the world a happier place. And you don't get that by stringing up 70-watt light bulbs (one per house! hoooo-wee!)... you get those by helping those people get themselves out of that condition - and it's all economics.
was a time when more text messages were being exchanged in the Philippines than anywhere else in the world.
Are you seriously suggesting that the 1500 people now buried under that mud are all buried with their cellphones? Just because downtown Manila is very well wired (and wireless) doesn't mean that the outlying islands are all up to speed. I cited that example, today, because the disaster in Leyte is an up-to-the-moment example of the consequences of really inefficient land use in a poor rural area. Portable power and water treatment are probably going to be a lot more appreciated in parts of the subcontinent and in Africa... but again, it's just a tiny symptom treatment.
Parent
Make fun of him all you want for the Segway (Score:5, Informative)
After he made his initial fortune (in medical devices) he started up an organization called FIRST, designed to get more smart kids interested in engineering, and to help our culture value problem solving more than drama. Since then the organization has grown to include thousands of teams, tens of thousands of high schoolers in countries all around the world.
I've been working with one of those teams for three years, and every year Kamen stands up and gives a speech, not about how much fun we're going to have building robots, but about his vision for what we can do to solve these sort of engineering problems, to bring clean water to those who need it, etc. He's done a lot of good work, aside from his kind of whacky human transport device, and for all that his speeches are about as depressing and boring as you can get, it's very clear that this is where his heart is. He's put a ton of money and effort into getting people into engineering so that some day if he can't solve these sorts of problem someone will.
And for as bored as I am every time I have to sit through him talking about it, I can admire that. This is about things a lot more important than a goofy looking scooter.
Not just high school (Score:4, Interesting)
And since last year, within the US they've been piloting a "Junior FIRST LEGO League" for ages 6-9. I just found out about it, and my daughter's in that age range... bet she'll be happy to hear.
Parent
The slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)
basic water filtering info here (Score:5, Informative)
Here's how it works: You mix a chemical called a 'flocculant' in with the water, which has been roughly filtered and perhaps let sit for a while to let any silt settle. This water is then mixed with air under high pressure, and pumped into tanks, entering halfway between the bottom and top of the tank with as little turbulence as possible. Because of the decrease in pressure, air bubbled form, and the flocculants cause small particles (bacteria, shit, uranium) to stick to them. The bubbles then gradually float to the surface, where the 'suds' or 'scum' is skimmed off, again with a minimal amount of turbulence. After enough of this happens, the water is then called clean and sucked out and wasted on fertilizing laws.
Generally, this is done on a continuous basis, and the equipment is a big, round vat. The ones I knew were from 5 to 23 meters in diameter. There's some real issues that make this process a bit more tricky than the description above would make it seem:
1) raw water is not produced, nor clean water consumed, at uniform rates. However, the filtering equipment works correctly at a very small flow/pressure. Holding tanks on either side are neccessary.
2) Flocculant is a consumable, and it takes a certain amount to clean a given volume of water to a certain improvement. Costs money.
3) water is not uniformly dirty.
4) generally, the larger units can let water stay and bubbles float (and grit sink to the bottom) longer, so less flocculant is needed. But these take up more space...LOTS more.
5) How clean does water really need to be? If there's some nasty outbreak (Cholera, Giardia) maybe it needs to be much cleaner. Maybe not so much at other times. Who makes that decision? My thoughts are that tap water should only be cleaned to a certain percent, which can be used for lawns / car-washes / firefighting / pools, cleaned a bit further for household uses (laundry, bathing) by an in-home filter, and cleaned further for drinking by a tap-based carbon filter (Brita, etc). But this is a lot of equipment. Real serious policy issues here. I doubt that such a poor and corrupt country as Bangladesh can handle these problems correctly. But hey, I guess eomthing is worth a try.
If it only... (Score:4, Funny)
If he can get it to run off of old AOL CDs the power problem is solved for all of us.
micro-capitalism (Score:4, Informative)
I've been reading that micro-loans, (micro-banks, micro- capitalism) is having a revolutionary effect in some of these villages too. The concept is to lend a small amount of money e.g. $50 to $200 to someone who would could not save that much money beforehand or a bank would find too much trouble to deal with. With that small amount of money the borrower buys some device like a peddle sewing machine, an irrigation pump, a kiln, etc. and improves their business. Early results are the entreupeneurs improve their incomes by an order magnitude. And the loan default rate is no worse than for a middle-class urban borrower. These micro-loans are really growing the rural economies where they are availble.
Maybe Segway 3.0... (Score:3, Informative)
Forward/Stop/Reverse is controlled by leaning, but steering is controlled by turning the control on the left side of the handlebars. Maybe future Segways will feature lean-stearing.
Re:Err.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every industrialized nation at some point or another went through a period of dirty industry.
Also think of it this way.... London today has the highest air quality it's ever had. Think about it.... first you had cooking/heating fires, then you had dirty industry, and now you've got a clean economy. I don't doubt that the rest of the world will eventually go through the same process.
Parent
Re:Err.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Err.. (Score:4, Insightful)
i realize this is far from ideal, but maybe somebody else can come up with a more environmentally friendly fuel pellet than "whatever you got that will ignite". in the meantime disease and death will be reduced because people can find a clean cup of water.
Parent
Re:Only three types of entrepreneur? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only three types of entrepreneur? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
don't blame him, and he has done much more (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen/ [wikipedia.org]
or
http://www.dekaresearch.com/ [dekaresearch.com]
Parent
Re:don't blame him, and he has done much more (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit.
The entire buildup was nothing but hype, from the preannouncment which had no information but "This will change the world!!" to all the idiotic TV "news" shows which had dorks riding Smegs up and down ramps and going in circles.
All this for a device which appeals to the narcisistic assholes who mow down small children on sidewalks.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/26/toddler_wo unded_in_segway_hitandrun/ [theregister.co.uk]
and then Sm
Re:don't blame him, and he has done much more (Score:3, Informative)
By far, these [gizmag.com] are the coolest Segways to date.
The one on the right is basically a wheelchair. I saw a thing on TV about it, and the thing can scoot around on 4 wheels, or go upright like a regular Segway on two wheels (like in the picture). The cool thing about it, is that the person in the "chair" can be at eye level with "normal" people.
The other thing is an offroad version. Both are pretty cool. The regular Segways have no real use in my opinion.
Re:Hate to say it... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Benjerman Franklin was only considered for his stove*, he would be considered a failure.
While they work extremely well if kept stoked, once they began to cool a little, they got extremely smokey. Meaning they weren't practical.
Parent
Re:This is old news (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm usually skeptical of a lot of efforts to solve poverty through technology- but this is definitely headed in the right direction. In my opinion, the most pressing needs in the developing world are the most basic ones: clean water, food, medical care, roads, electricity, basic literacy. Laptops or whatever are way down on the list because their potential payoff is relatively small compared to their cost. Things like clean water and cheap electricity could have big payoffs with relatively little investment; if you're suffering from less disease your productivity will go up, if you have light in the evening your kids can do their homework and the parents can do more work.
Whether or not he's got the solution, he's at least got the right problems.
Parent
Learn the subject matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.
And now I ask you - what good would a third wheel do for a wheelchair that climbs stairs? Especially when it already has more than three wheels.
The gyroscope was so that the chair would stay level when it had to go up on its hind wheels to climb the stairs.
Parent
You're being too literal (Score:4, Informative)
Water-borne diseases are a HUGE problem in the third world. Seriously, they have *fatal* diarrhea, and I'm not saying that to be funny.
Parent
Re:I was thinking about this the other day (Score:5, Informative)
Steralizing is usually done via steam at 2atm( 250-275F IIRC) for 15 minutes. Plus it doesn't remove contaminants. Mud + heat = dryer mud.
Most of the water purification systems use either an evaporation/condensation cycle or reverse osmosis through a semi-permiable membrane.
Of the 2, evap/cond is both more reliable and more scaleable. As a bonus, you can literally do it with 2 coconuts and a banana leaf.
Parent
Re:The Purpose? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent