News

Segway engineers: "It's a software problem that dumps riders in the road"

Embarrassing enough to have to recall 6,000 slightly faulty Segway Human Transporters, even if they are being "voluntarily recalled" for an upgrade. Understandable that the engineers have blamed the software for the fact that the self-balancing scooters can suddenly run out of power, causing riders to fall off. But will Segway be happy about having to quote this 6,000 number? Hardly!

The announcement was jointly posted by the company, and a federal regulatory body, and seems to suggest the company fears class suits, since one of the victims sustained a head injury "that required stitches," according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.

But the surprise is not so much that all the Human Transporters have had to be recalled. Rather, it's the fact that the glitch has forced the company to reveal its sales figures. The report says: "Description: This recall involves all Segway HT i167 ("i Series") models sold to consumers."

In addition, says the report, Segway LLC is including all e167 ("e Series") and i167 models sold to commercial users, and all p133 ("p Series") models sold to consumers in test markets. So the 6,000 figure includes the original beta-test samples.

It's been known that sales were still slow, but nobody guessed things were that slow!

The problem is pretty simple; there appears to be a safety cut-out when the motor overloads the battery. The trouble is that the battery may not be over-loaded by the fact that there's an abnormal load: "The scooters may not deliver sufficient power under certain operating conditions, particularly when the batteries are low," said Segway.

The power slow-down could happen if the rider "speeds up abruptly, encounters an obstacle, or continues to ride after receiving a low-battery alert," said the announcement.

In other words, the hardware engineers have determined that it's a software problem. The fix is to upgrade the software - something the user can't do - hence the recall.

There's a full summary on Reuters' site. There's also the "conspiracy theory" which relates the recall to President Bush's accident on the Segway, but of course, that's nonsense. Isn't it?