Clever students create cheapo DIY Segway

A tenacious combination of high school and MIT students have put together their very own DIY Segway, which would likely have Dean Kamen rolling in his grave... if he were actually dead. The team of ingenious do-it-yourself'ers put together a fairly workable Segway knock-off for less than a thousand dollars that can keep pace with the actual model (11 MPH versus the real-deal's 12.5). By using off-the-shelf supplies, like a Machine Science XBoard microcontroller, pieces of Lexan for the steering mechanism, and light, cheap aluminum for the frame, the gang was able to assemble a fairly stripped down version of the scooter. Apparently, the kids are still working out the kinks, but if this keeps up, Kamen and crew might have to start watching their backs. Check the video after the break to see the still-shaky personal transporter in action.

[Sotheby @ Aug 21st 2007 11:22AM]

Nerds, UNITE!

[Tim @ Aug 21st 2007 11:33AM]

I can see it now...

DIYers forming Segway gangs, cruising down sidewalks in drones to Comicons and video game movie premieres

[Scooby03 @ Aug 21st 2007 11:31AM]

Beats a micro scooter

[Spyvie @ Aug 21st 2007 11:37AM]

Hmmm, this gives me an idea...

I think I'll photograph my next case mod project in front of a couple of portapotties

[randy @ Aug 21st 2007 11:41AM]

How many of these "fairly workable" Segway stories are we going to hear about every week? Ideally though Dean would drop the price on that thing so people could actually buy it.

[Matt B @ Aug 21st 2007 11:56AM]

It's amazing how much can get done without the allure of sex, drugs, and alcohol.

[Brian @ Aug 21st 2007 11:58AM]

That's very cool! Unlike other readers here, this is the first time I've heard of a working DIY segway.

It's cool that engadget gives these guys their 15 minutes of fame.

[ethana2 @ Sep 7th 2007 9:27PM]

The instructions are all online.

www.netcraft.com.au/geoffrey/meta/

I'm suprised you hadn't seen them before. I love the fact that while patents can defend corporate monopolies from similar competition, the consumer himself has the power to compete :)
It almost makes patent law seem like it can't impede progress anymore!

Stick it to the man: build your own.

[Rob @ Aug 21st 2007 11:59AM]

Well, this is a better knock off of the original. And a much better prototype than the one posted some time in the past that had a ridiculous third wheel.

It's a work in progress. So, great job.

[Austin @ Aug 21st 2007 11:59AM]

Seems like if you threw wheels the size of the segway's you could match and surpass the top speed by quite a bit.

It looks a lot better though. I always thought the segway looked a bit bulky.

[STIEN @ Aug 21st 2007 12:00PM]

It just isnt as cool. And i betcha it isnt off road.

[chezzo @ Aug 21st 2007 5:12PM]

Sorry... did you post that in the wrong article?
Cos I think you just accidentally called a Segway "cool".

[davidemerson @ Aug 21st 2007 12:07PM]

The Segway weighs over 100 lbs, the knock off looks considerably lighter, like the average urbanite could carry it up a few flights of stairs to an apartment/condo etc.

[bobartig @ Aug 22nd 2007 4:58PM]

The segway is right around 80 lbs, but it's an awkward load. I've handled my housemate's a few times for him, and taken it out for a few spins. The DIY one is amazingly small.

It's fascinating that something so small could generate so much precision torque. That came out sounding dirty.

[Wwhat @ Aug 21st 2007 12:20PM]

Frankly if an MIT student can't rig up a segway in a few hours he should be tossed off MIT, in fact if any student of any technical university can't do it he should be tossed off and be put to work greeting customers at walmart, or possible be sent out to make tubesocks in india.

BTW, does their version have a gyroscope? I hear that's the secret ingredient of the real one.

[Matt @ Aug 21st 2007 12:53PM]

This looks like it was actually put together using parts from the FIRST Robotics kit. So yes, it probably does have a gyro chip.

For some background, FIRST is a foundation started by Dean Kamen. There's an annual competition where high school students team up with universities or companies to build a robot in a short period of time to compete against each other in a tournament-style game. The kits that you get for signing up are pretty impressive. They have all kinds of essentials for the controls, logic, etc. The teams just add the raw materials and design.

Before the segway was released, I remember Kamen telling us how they threw the gyro chip into the kits just to see what people would do with it. It was a pretty ingenious way of getting ideas for the segway from some of the top engineering firms and universities while still educating high school students.

As a former high school participant, I would highly encourage anyone interested to get involved.

http://web.mit.edu/first/www/ - site for the FIRST team that built this

http://www.usfirst.org/ - FIRST website

[SAS @ Sep 14th 2007 7:11AM]

Dear Sir or Ma'am AKA Wwhat,

This is crap slinging for personal aggrandizement; perhaps you would care to earn a Ph.D., or if you have, you would like to work for a pittance at a university and start putting your money where your mouth is!

The most gifted students arrive at various institutions of higher learning with all sorts of backgrounds. Most come with a high school diploma, some arrive with a Bachelors or even a Masters. However, to presume that they should all be up to a task like this is folly.

Prior to coming into my classroom, I've had students who have torn apart every conceivable type of device, but couldn't take even a simple derivative (repeat after me, "e^x dx"). Others were doing group theory in HIGH SCHOOL, but had never written a computer program. Still others are computational, visualization or theoretical geniuses totally lacking in any practical skills whatever. By the time they leave all are engineers!

That's not to say they're all interchangeable. Quite the contrary, each is usually highly specialized--and we encourage them to market themselves into their career fields as such.

Your statement reflects ignorance, arrogance and/or frustration. Perhaps you've never dealt with anyone smarter than yourself. In that case, I'm very sorry for you. It's sad that you haven't had a chance to study at MIT, CalTech, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford or any one of our world's 20 to 30 other top-tier institutions. If you have, that's even more unfortunate because you were clearly unable to grasp the vastness of your school's body-intellect (which I can assure you dwarfs even the greatest personal intellects).

[gshb @ Aug 21st 2007 7:07PM]

ah yes FIRST. i remember competing the first year FIRST was in california. we lost 1st place by a point. but yah, the kits are impressive.

[Wwhat @ Aug 22nd 2007 10:35AM]

I'm sorry to hear I overestimated my fellowman mr sas, seems dumb is the average universities cater to then, excuse me for my optimism and view that instituted of higher learning should adhere to some standards.

This does explain things like the state of NASA though.

[Pat @ Aug 21st 2007 12:27PM]

haha, that woman is a total b*tch.

"k this is a little faster, he he...I'm a show off."

[Jake Tobak @ Aug 21st 2007 12:37PM]

I completely agree.
I wanted to slap her so hard.

[Anthony @ Aug 21st 2007 8:48PM]

First- Yes, I'm a jerk.

Second- that gal should probably do a bit more walkin' (or joggin' or bikin' or whatever) & a bit less Segwayin'.

Third- maybe she just shouldn't wear pants that highlight the second point.

[Joe @ Aug 21st 2007 1:11PM]

I think they should call it the "Costanza" ... reminding me of the Seinfeld episode where George, who talked himself into one of those little sit down electric scooters by faking a handicap, faced off with some geezers riding less capable scooters ... "what is that, a 4 volt?" as he smirked, only to be followed by a hilarious race down the sidewalk at blazing speed of 3.2 MPH. In this case, the real Segway would have a bit of advantage topping out 1.5 MPH higher than the MIT students ... great job.

[whatever @ Aug 21st 2007 1:14PM]

The build materials of a lot of stuff is pretty small, in comparison to marketing, distribution, employees wages and profit. As soon as he start selling the DIY Sageway, would it still be less than 1K?

[Paul Pick-Aluas @ Aug 21st 2007 4:15PM]

bulk rate on the materials and assembly would more than compensate for marketing and personnel costs

[v_dogg @ Aug 21st 2007 1:35PM]

freakin sweet

[Markus @ Aug 21st 2007 1:42PM]

Those porta-potties are dangerously close to the fry truck.

[fistpittingnork @ Aug 21st 2007 3:05PM]

They see me roll on my Segway
I know in my heart they think I'm
White and nerdy

Think I'm just too white and nerdy
Think I'm just too white and nerdy
Can't you see I'm white and nerdy
Look at me I'm white and nerdy

[SAS @ Aug 21st 2007 5:30PM]

Thanks Weird Al! That's HKN's (Eta Kappa Nu, the EE honor society's) latest anthem! You haven't really heard the song until you've hot wired it into a school or corporate sound/PA system! I recommend a quick mid-range band-pass filter first to make it more audible--and hence enjoyable!

Here's some more of his amazing magnum opus:


First in my class here at MIT!
Got skills, I'm a champion at D&D (oh yeah!)
M.C. Escher, that's my favorite M.C. (so ya'll need to go read G.E.B.)
Keep you're 40, I'll just have an Earl Grey tea (anti-oxidants!)
My rims never spin, to the contrary
You'll find that they're quite stationary
All of my action figures are cherry
Stephen Hawking's in my library*

My MySpace page is all totally pimped out (duh)
Got people beggin' for my top eight spaces (yeah)
Yo, I know pi to a thousand places (nope, but I keep it in my PDA)
Ain't got no grills but I still wear braces (nod to Chamillionaire)
I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise (goes great with cottage cheese and mashed potatoes)
I'm a wiz at Minesweeper, I could play for days (Nope, I'm NOT Charlie Eppes!)
Once you've see my sweet moves, you're gonna stay amazed
My fingers movin' so fast I'll set the place ablaze

There's no killer app I haven't run (true--and a few weird OSs too.)
At Pascal, well I'm number one (that's why they made me teach it for four semesters!)
Do vector calculus just for fun (absolutely, we could completely revolutionize air traffic management if we could fuse is with GPS technology)
I ain't got a gat, but I got a soldering gun (of course, how else can we assemble our custom circuits--HKN baby!)
Happy Days is my favorite theme song (NOT)
I could sure kick your butt in a game of ping pong (well...not any more)
I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on (still!)
I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon (true, please don't confuse Java and Javascript, they have about as much in common as Klingon and Vulcan!)

(*Physics, Math and gifted engineering students, must read the following essential Hawking: 1) "Singularities in Collapsing Stars and Expanding Universes", 2) "The Nature of Space and Time, The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime", 3) "The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind", 4) "Information Loss in Black Holes", 5) God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History". Feel free to read his popular stuff, it pays for more cool gadgets and innovations. Let's keep Hakwing around another 30 years (or more) if we can!)

[kuzu-b @ Aug 21st 2007 3:20PM]

Lol, the nail in Segway's coffin. Oh wait, Segway was dead years ago. Talk about a product that fails the common sense test.

[PEZ @ Aug 21st 2007 3:36PM]

This was don 4 years ago at least by some old guy - though he made it for less than a grand. Google it.

[Tom @ Aug 21st 2007 3:41PM]

This is huge news...5 freaking years ago.
http://tlb.org/scooter.html

[SAS @ Aug 21st 2007 5:56PM]

Tom, thanks for that link. My students will all be there tomorrow! I hope at least one of them will try one of those projects--but I can't kick them enough money short of outside sponsorship--they'll need to work that out themselves.

Anyhow, this is great stuff, thanks Endgadget!

[Cam T. @ Aug 21st 2007 6:01PM]

@spyvie: HAHA yeah didn't notice that till the picture was all over the internet. Ah well, it's classy regardless.

@whoever suggested bigger wheels: We thought about it. I think for torque reasons with the FIRST motors we went with our current size wheels.

@everybody: It's stabler than it looks. I'm still getting used to segways in general, but it's almost as comfy / not shaky as the commercial ones.

@Matt: Don't forget http://www.waylandfirst.com/ ! We're looking for sponsorship, and we're hoping to use this to reel in some sponsors. We're one of 3 teams that worked on this... But thanks for linking to 97's website! (I was on 97 this year, now we're starting our own Wayland team.)

[Cam T. @ Aug 21st 2007 6:02PM]

@Tom: We've seen the tlb.org one before. We link to it at the bottom of our page and we're trying to catch up in google ranking now.

@the annoying person who thinks it should be doable in a few hours: The commercial ones use a couple of gyroscopes. We use one gyroscope and one accelerometer, as it says on our site, along with another for the steering.

[Miles @ Aug 21st 2007 6:24PM]

I don't think Kamen would be rolling around in his grave, he'd probably be crying with joy.
He created FIRST for reasons like this. And I wouldn't be surprised if these guys were/are in FIRST in high-school.

FIRST were some of the best days I've had an probably will ever have at school.

[Snively @ Aug 21st 2007 8:52PM]

Ha, this is so funny, I was just walking around campus yesterday and saw this thing. A few friends of mine all chatted about it for a while, it was pretty cool!

MIT is probably the coolest place in the world.

[sirius @ Aug 22nd 2007 2:35AM]

Damn :P
I wish I would be a genius instead of a dumbass :|

[Carl @ Aug 22nd 2007 4:19AM]

Will MIT re-architect the campus to accommodate it?

[Carl Trimble @ Aug 22nd 2007 9:23AM]

Maybe if they would have put bigger wheels on it, they would have made the 12 mph rather than the 11 mph.

[Tai @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:08PM]

This was done *years* ago by this dude, and I wouldn't be surprised if those "clever" kids were very much aware of his effort. Got to give credit where credit is due.

http://tlb.org/scooter.html

[Ken Colton @ Aug 25th 2007 1:00PM]

Before asserting your arrogance, why don't you try following the main link and reading their website. Yes they were very well aware of that effort. But that fact is that one was done by an adult with years and years of experience in that field. The impressive thing about this is that it was designed, built and coded by High School students under the direction of a few MIT undergrads. You might be thinking that the MIT students built it and the HS students just watched, but this was not the case at all. The students were taught all of the things necessary for them to do it them self and it was their innovation that led to the final product.

[Rick Keeney @ Aug 23rd 2007 5:16PM]

I would imagine Segway has some patents they could brandish if any of these knock-offs turn into real competition.

[Zachary Carpenter @ Aug 28th 2007 6:25AM]

These are fairly easy to build with a good microprocessor and a lot of tuning. I built mine in one weekend and tweaked with the code for a few days to get it perfect. It performes almost identical to a real segway:

http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~zachary-carpenter/

You can't stream the video you have to d/l it.
Zach

[SAS @ Sep 14th 2007 8:12AM]

Wwhat wrote: "I'm sorry to hear I overestimated my fellowman mr sas, seems dumb is the average universities cater to then, excuse me for my optimism and view that instituted of higher learning should adhere to some standards. This does explain things like the state of NASA though."

Here's a thought. Based upon the usage, grammar and spelling one might not hold a high opinion of Wwhat. This is not to say Wwhat is stupid; however, there is some degree of ambiguity regarding who exactly gets kicked out of school...hmm.

Here's another. NASA is broken precisely because its focus has shifted away from science toward political point-making. Many universities have fallen into the same trap. However, universities are spared having the VPOTUS sitting in the drivers seat! I personally know numerous NASA scientists and engineers--they are ALL top notch people--there are no average thinkers among the techies at NASA. However, there are also very few truly charismatic leaders. That's traditionally been a vacuum regretably filled by whatever pols are blowing in the wind. Some have a brain or at least a willingness to listen, learn, ask questions and build good teams. Others sit around saying "C'mon, launch already!", which as we've seen leads to tragedy. What NASA really needs is a core of proven, responsible, charismatic and visionary science leaders who are pretty much afforded the latitude and trust to make it great again. My sense is that the retired astronauts would be a good recruitment pool. Some type of technical doctorate should be required to lead NASA--at least an M.D.. Maybe anyone who has served in a popularly elected (municipal through federal) or senior (appointed state & federal) positions should be disqualified from the top job to help avoid cronyism. Not that it won't occur. Like all socialism, perpetually funded government programs always go south. The earliest symptom is middle and upper management slowly destroying them from within. Next political forces unfound them from their initial mandates (however visionary). Finally an economy of horse-trading and favors attacks the at the roots--the workers and support staff--bleeding once robust organizations that somehow consume ever increasing levels of capital.

Knowing this is no solution. Similarly, modeling the ideal freshman at Princeton, Stanford, or MIT is no justification for eliminating all the others (although such models ease the job of admissions officers). Almost universal components of the aforementioned model are literacy and communication skills. This will certainly be changing--students do increasingly more with only spoken or only written products and using content that is only read or heard. This trend moves sharply away from the standard of previous centuries which demanded a breadth of skills in every cumminications mode. Today it is conceivable for a student to do better than 90% of their learning in front of a computer. Therein lies the problem. When students lack diverse functional experiences, how can we expect them to solve complex real-world problems. The single most frightening prospect of that which I see is a technological crash following the depletion of critical natural resources.

So, are the universities catering to the average--thankfully no. We are still attracting a select populous. However, how this group dinstinguishes themselves may be difficult for society to understand. No longer are they building rockets or crystal radios. Todays brightest kids are solving advanced math, doing molecular biology research, and considering environmental issues from novel perspectives. Their work is not as flashy as it was 50 years ago. But it's not just valid, it no less valuable, and potentially more important. In 100 years when we look back at the good, the bad and the ugly, the whole space program might not be considered in the first category. On the other hand, fields like microbiology, epidemiology, atmospheric science and alternative energy research may be viewed as the crown jewels of our time.

[SAS @ Sep 18th 2007 6:46PM]

Wwhat wrote: "I'm sorry to hear I overestimated my fellowman mr sas, seems dumb is the average universities cater to then, excuse me for my optimism and view that instituted of higher learning should adhere to some standards. This does explain things like the state of NASA though."

Here's a thought. Based upon the usage, grammar and spelling one might not hold a high opinion of Wwhat. This is not to say Wwhat is stupid; however, there is some degree of ambiguity regarding who exactly gets kicked out of school...hmm.

Here's another. NASA is broken precisely because its focus has shifted away from science toward political point-making. Many universities have fallen into the same trap. However, universities are spared having the VPOTUS sitting in the drivers seat! I personally know numerous NASA scientists and engineers--they are ALL top notch people--there are no average thinkers among the techies at NASA. However, there are also very few truly charismatic leaders. That's traditionally been a vacuum regretably filled by whatever pols are blowing in the wind. Some have a brain or at least a willingness to listen, learn, ask questions and build good teams. Others sit around saying "C'mon, launch already!", which as we've seen leads to tragedy. What NASA really needs is a core of proven, responsible, charismatic and visionary science leaders who are pretty much afforded the latitude and trust to make it great again. My sense is that the retired astronauts would be a good recruitment pool. Some type of technical doctorate should be required to lead NASA--at least an M.D.. Maybe anyone who has served in a popularly elected (municipal through federal) or senior (appointed state & federal) positions should be disqualified from the top job to help avoid cronyism. Not that it won't occur. Like all socialism, perpetually funded government programs always go south. The earliest symptom is middle and upper management slowly destroying them from within. Next political forces unfound them from their initial mandates (however visionary). Finally an economy of horse-trading and favors attacks the at the roots--the workers and support staff--bleeding once robust organizations that somehow consume ever increasing levels of capital.

Knowing this is no solution. Similarly, modeling the ideal freshman at Princeton, Stanford, or MIT is no justification for eliminating all the others (although such models ease the job of admissions officers). Almost universal components of the aforementioned model are literacy and communication skills. This will certainly be changing--students do increasingly more with only spoken or only written products and using content that is only read or heard. This trend moves sharply away from the standard of previous centuries which demanded a breadth of skills in every cumminications mode. Today it is conceivable for a student to do better than 90% of their learning in front of a computer. Therein lies the problem. When students lack diverse functional experiences, how can we expect them to solve complex real-world problems. The single most frightening prospect of that which I see is a technological crash following the depletion of critical natural resources.

So, are the universities catering to the average--thankfully no. We are still attracting a select populous. However, how this group dinstinguishes themselves may be difficult for society to understand. No longer are they building rockets or crystal radios. Todays brightest kids are solving advanced math, doing molecular biology research, and considering environmental issues from novel perspectives. Their work is not as flashy as it was 50 years ago. But it's not just valid, it no less valuable, and potentially more important. In 100 years when we look back at the good, the bad and the ugly, the whole space program might not be considered in the first category. On the other hand, fields like microbiology, epidemiology, atmospheric science and alternative energy research may be viewed as the crown jewels of our time.