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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (58758)	1/14/2002 1:47:46 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

"OT" Monday January 14, 3:43 AM High-tech scooter may face roadblock in Japan By Reed Stevenson sg.news.yahoo.com TOKYO (Reuters) - A self-balancing scooter billed as heralding a revolution in the way people travel could run into an obstacle in Japan, where a robotics professor wants recognition for inventing a nearly identical machine 15 years ago. The claim comes a little more than a month after U.S. inventor Dean Kamen unveiled the "Segway Human Transporter" and Segway LLC, the company founded to make and sell it, ending a year of speculation and secrecy over the invention that kept the high-tech world in thrall. "I'm not saying that they took the idea but I want people to know that it existed before the Segway was developed," Kazuo Yamafuji, Professor Emiritus at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications, told Reuters. "I made this machine 15 years ago." More importantly, Yamafuji applied for a patent for his machine in 1987, which was granted in 1996. Legal experts say that while it may be difficult for Yamafuji or anyone else to challenge Dean Kamen's U.S. patent, the award-winning U.S. inventor could run into trouble if Segway decides to sell the scooter in Japan. With its densely packed cities and enthusiasm for high-tech gadgets, Japan could be an ideal market for Segway's machine. The motorised scooter, which went under the code names "Ginger" or "It" before it was revealed to the public, is a device that Kamen believes has the potential to transform urban landscapes, allowing people to zip over short distances instead of driving their cars. Users stand on a small platform between two wheels and hold on to a handle similar to that on a bicycle. Leaning forward moves the scooter forward, leaning back reverses course and turns are made by twisting the handle. While Professor Yamafuji admits he never took his invention beyond the research phase and into commercial development, he insists that the basic ideas incorporated in the Segway scooter are the same: a computer processor to detect minute shifts in balance to keep the machine upright on two parallel wheels. "I call it a 'parallel bicycle'," said Yamafuji, a robotics scientist for more than 30 years and now in semi-retirement.