Tilto personal transporter looks like seated Segway, does donuts in Argentine parking lot
Remember how the Segway revolutionized personal transportation? Neither do we, but this Tilto single-person electric vehicle is really gonna go places. Like, around the parking lot -- "manos libres!" Named for the two-step maneuver you'll use to get going (tilt and go), the battery-powered Tilto can move forward, backwards, and sideways at its top speed of 20km/h (12 mph) without the need for pedals or a steering wheel. You'll be able to travel 15 km with each charge, but that should give you plenty of time to score a traffic ticket in the UK, or to roll a safe distance away from screaming fans after your next concert in Arizona. Tilto is little more than a "prototipo experimental" at this point, without a release date or any plans for production, but roll past the break to see how it works.
Show full PR text
New Vehicle Created by an Argentine Engineer
Called TILTO (from "Tilt and go"), it is a single person electric vehicle of the "Inverted Pendulum" type, which automatically maintains balance in two perpendicular directions simultaneously.
The TILTO is controlled simply by tilting the driver's body: To the front or to the back to move forward or backward and sideways to make a turn, leaving his hands free. It has no steering wheel, or handlebars, or levers or pedals.
It is environmentally friendly and extremely efficient, spending just a fraction of what you spend using an internal combustion vehicle, and even recharges its batteries during braking or going downhill.
With a top speed of 20 Km/Hr. and a range of about 15 km, its characteristics make it suitable to replace conventional vehicles in urban transport in short and medium distances.
The whole development of the electronic and electromechanical control systems was made entirely by the Argentine engineer Marcelo Fornaso, and the concept is unprecedented worldwide. The original idea came as an evolution and improvement of the Segway Personal Transporter (www.segway.com) by multiplying by two the variables controlled by that vehicle.
TILTO has multiple accelerometers and gyro sensors, whose information is read by a microprocessor and processed by a sophisticated piece of control software, which calculates 100 times per second the inclinations forward-backward and sideways, and controls two electric motors separately for balancing the vehicle dynamically.
This new Argentine invention already has a working prototype and has filled a patent application.
