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Clear Speakers, Segway Clone Top CES Coverage 165

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wish-I-coulda-gone dept.
jlouderb writes "Phew. We just finished five days of wall to wall coverage of this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Highlights include "invisible" speakers, a Segway clone for around $1,000, details on Intel's LCoS plans, a humanoid robot from Sony and more HDTV recorders, new home networking schemes and flat panel TVs than you can shake a stick at. If you weren't one of the 100,000 or so who made it to Vegas, check out what you missed at PCMag.com."
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Clear Speakers, Segway Clone Top CES Coverage More

Clear Speakers, Segway Clone Top CES Coverage

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  • Invisible Speakers (Score:5, Funny)

    by GameGod0 ( 680382 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:06PM (#7945099)
    Coincidentally, there are no known photographs of these "invisible" speakers.

  • The other highlight (Score:5, Informative)

    by r_glen ( 679664 ) * on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:06PM (#7945100)
    Toshiba's .85 inch, 2-4GB hard drive [pcmag.com]

  • Invisible speakers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:09PM (#7945120) Homepage
    Throwing your voice just got a hell of a lot easier. I foresee excellent office pranks.

    "Nice game of Solitaire you've got going there."

  • Not a Segway (Score:5, Insightful)

    by One Louder ( 595430 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:12PM (#7945142)
    Uh, that thing has *four* closely-spaced wheels - that makes it something that's going to fall over really easily. Stop suddenly and you're going to be singing soprano. There's no gyroscopic balancing going on.

    Not a big shock since the Segway's balancing system is patented.

    • Not a big shock since the Segway's balancing system is patented.

      I'm no patent lawyer, but I think that you might be able to use a unicycle as prior art. Although with a unicycle, you have a human doing the work of the gyroscope, computer, and motors.

      • Re:Not a Segway (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EvilFrog ( 559066 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:27PM (#7945245)
        That's like saying you couldn't patent a printing press because people had been writing by hand for years, or a loom because weaving could be done without it. Using logic, one could claim the universe as prior art to anything, as we are simply using the laws of physics to provide means to an end. Finding new and better ways to do things that can already be done is not only patentable, but one of the reasons that patents exist.
    • a Segway clone for around $1,000

      So some company is finally trying to cash in on the lucrative market that Segway is tapping.

      Seems like a winner to me...

    • I know this is slashdot, so who would have read the article ... *but* the silly thing travels at a top speed of 10mph and takes 15 feet to stop itself. Doesn't sound like it is much danger of falling over.
      • You never heard of "rocks" or any other debris likely to be littering the pathway? If the wheels hit something even at a paltry 10 mph and your nose will impact the sidewalk.

        • Actually, I don't think it would be easy to tip this thing forward. The geometry is such that your center of gravity is behind the wheels on that platform. This means it requires considerable force to 'lift' you up for you to tip over forward. If your gravity were centered on the axles of the two front wheels, then definitely a twig or something would send you tumbling.

          That being said, this scooter looks like a massive piece of crap. Not massive in size, but massive in its crapiness. There's no real inno

    • Right, because even an idiot [bbc.co.uk] can keep the Segway balanced.

    • Re:Not a Segway (Score:2, Interesting)

      by aflat362 ( 601039 )
      Maddox [xmission.com] had this idea long before this clone

    • Re:Not a Segway (Score:3, Insightful)

      by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 )


      Uh, that thing has *four* closely-spaced wheels - that makes it something that's going to fall over really easily.

      Another thing that this does is increase the footprint for the device. I believe one of the advantages touted for the Segway was that it could be used wherever someone would walk due to a footprint roughly the same size as a pedestrian. It looks like if one wanted to pivot around with this device, you're much more likely to catch someone's toes as the back wheels swing around.

      • Right! One of the coolest things about the Segway is that it can spin around in a circle requiring no more space than its wheelbase.

        Another nice thing about the Segway is that you move it (at least forward/backward) merely by adjusting your balance naturally. And you stop by doing a "whoa doggy" maneuver that is pretty instinctive.

        I assume (article didn't say) this is more like a standard go-kart with a stop/go (or motorcycle flick of the wrist) and handlebars. I bet it won't be nearly as agile.

        --
    • Segway doesn't use gyroscopes to actually balance the thing, only to sense balance. It uses the motors and wheels to keep it balanced.

      A 4 wheeled variation could use the additional wheels to detect the angle the platform is at, and use the motors to balance it. It could (probably) be just as stable as the segway.

  • Ok... the robots... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrPerfekt ( 414248 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:13PM (#7945151) Homepage Journal
    How can a public company that's based on profits and such in this day and age spend so much resources on those bloody robots without every really selling any of them? This could be my misconception though, but I have never heard of anybody really buying them.

    It seems every few months we have a new video of the latest, greatest robot dancing. Maybe I should be happy about all of this because it's R&D and any of that is needed in today's marketplace because so many companies have ditched it. In any case, I rather have them research rockets or other space machinary to get to Mars a little quicker. (I realize robotics has an impact on space exploration but sheesh, what's the use if we can't get anywhere first.)

    I'm really ranting now but the hot dance moves on the Super Humanoid Robot 5000 really makes me want to cap myself.

    • Here Are Three Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:26PM (#7945238) Homepage Journal
      In the short range, company visibility, and advertising. If Sony makes cute impressive robots, you may conclude (correctly) Sony is an on the ball technical company and therefore its VCRs, Televisions, Computers, and Games are likely to be of a superior quality.

      Spin off technologies used in industry the general public is unaware of.

      Long range goals (something American companies often neglect). Someday everyone will have robotic aids and servants. It won't happen overnight, nor necessarily in our life time, but its an easy prediction to make for something almost certain to happen within the next hundred years.

      • Someday everyone will have robotic aids and servants ...and don't forget the first rule of marketing.....first in the customers mind = best in the customers mind.
      • Next hundred years? What? Apparently, you think that either
        a) It's more difficult to come from QRIO to a general-purpose intelligent robot than from radio to Internet, from Wright's Flyer to 1000+ passenger jets, solar-powered planes and UAVs, from Model T to GM's Autonomy.
        or
        b) The rate of progress is decreasing.
        is true. But I think both a and b are false. And we will have intelligent robots in a few decades, not centuries.
        Check this [transhumanism.org] out.
      • Of course, my last Sony VCR shat itself playing a reasonably high-quality tape. It ate a mode gear, as VCRs in general are wont to do because they use too many plastic gears. And no, there was no obstruction in the tape's path, except parts of the VCR which apparently did not want to go where they were supposed to. The device was also sitting level as it should be, being used very near 1G, well within temperature and humidity limits. (I lived about 50' above sea level at the time, even, so I'm pretty sure a
    • I think this may be like playing a sport to learn physics or writing a computer game to learn a programming language. It's a fun way to figure out some practical concepts that may eventually be applied to something else. Sure, we aren't going to see Honda produce dancing cars or conversational power generators, but building a robot like this introduces lots of design challanges that can be used for other things, plus it may get the engineers thinking more creatively than they usually do. Sorry, I can't thin

  • segway clone (Score:4, Insightful)

    by potpie ( 706881 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:14PM (#7945157) Journal
    Does anyone here own or know anyone who owns a segway?

    Wasn't it the biggest let down when you heard that this new type of mobile that would "revolutionize" transportation forever... turned out to be a bulky, overpriced scooter?

    Hey- the wheels are next to each other. Neat. Now why would I want to buy one?

    It was a great idea, but not any more than meal-in-a-pill was a good idea, or the anthropomorphic robot of the 1950's. Neat, but who really wants one (not counting rich people with money to burn)? So does it really deserve to be copied? Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery... but... it's a scooter!

    • Re:segway clone (Score:3, Interesting)

      by /dev/trash ( 182850 )
      I saw one, in all palces, Arkansas. A radio station biought it and usedit at promo events. It also had ads on it. The gal who was driving it was hot.
    • Over in Europe, there have been a lot of stories about obesity in America. Do you suppose that some people have got to the point where they have to use a vehicle like this just to reach thier car?
    • The value equation on this is all out of whack. Two wheel electric scooters with the same speed and range sell for under $300. Only difference is, you have to balance it like a bicycle so low speed maneuverability isn't as good as the chariot type scooters. $1000 for four wheels and no electronics is more than a little steep.

    • Re:segway clone (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ParadoxDruid ( 602583 ) * on Sunday January 11, 2004 @03:00PM (#7945842) Homepage
      I saw a security person (I assume a higher up) using one to get around campus at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Not sure if it was purchased or a test or what, but still caught me by surprise.

      I do think Segways have a use in positions such as, say, warehouse manager and other jobs where people are walking around all day.

      Still, I'd rather walk and get the exercise. Oh well.

  • Attitude for success (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:15PM (#7945158)
    Best line, John Wang, president of Global Manufacture Group: "You bought it, you figure it out."
    • "We said, we can do this, but the gyroscope technology--we didn't think people could afford it."

      Rad2Go [rad2go.com] : Segway [segway.com] = I-Cybie [virtualpet.com] : Abio [sony.net]

      I guess there's a market for knock-off gucci watches, so why not knock-off Segways? But still, I think it's in very bad taste. I hope they get laughed off the stage.

  • High Definition TiVo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) * on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:15PM (#7945160) Journal
    I've been a TiVo junkie for about 3 years now and an high definition junkie for about 6 months. I didn't realize how spoiled I was with TiVo until I had to watch HD content in real time (gasp!). So right now, I'm just itching to put my hands on the High Definition TiVo [directv.com]. It comes with a 250Gig HD which is enough for about 30 Hrs of HD content or 200 hours of standard definition content. It can record over-the-air (OTA) HD or DirecTV HD. Drool....

    -S

    • Me too.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by microbob ( 29155 )
      Ever since I got my TiVo my Proscan HD decoder just collects dust....

      I did use it a little last month when I tried out HDNet, but sadily I'm addicted to TiVo (dual tuner no less) and promptly cancelled HDNet and turned the Proscan off.

      -mb

  • The transparent speakers are my pick (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:16PM (#7945171) Homepage Journal
    They say you can layer it over a flat panel. Aside from the problem that you then cannot use it for a touch screen, this is fantastic news. Consider having a laptop with three of these things; two of them on the body of the unit past the keyboard where speakers usually go if they are not under your hands where only an asshole would put them (even if you type as you are "supposed" to and hold your arms up all day, your hands will be in the way of the sound) and one built into the display as a center channel. The speakers on the unit, being thin and flat, could be slid out and either connected using headphone extension cables or connected on some kind of cable on a reel, though that sounds likely to fail. Anyway, bang! You've got Dolby 3 Stereo with wide separation.

    Sliding the suckers out probably isn't necessary on a laptop anyway, because you'll be sitting so close to it. However what with the rash of large-display laptops coming out these days, it might be nice to have this feature, so that you can have portable cinema that a couple of people can sit down in front of.

    Alternatively, and perhaps more realistically outside of Japanese test markets, you could have a stereo flat panel speaker built into the display for your front channel, and then plug speakers into the headphone jack and configure the sound to use them for the rear channel audio. This is probably a much better idea, but this is one of those stream-of-conciousness posts.

    • I don't know... I mean, it's lexan. You can color it. Why not just make the housing the speaker? You need it anyway. It's great for size reduction of things.

      And what about frequancy range? If it's ultrasonic capable, maybe we could use bowls made of plastic to keep soup warm. Or for cleaning things... Also good for fire alarms... all the windows go off. Put the cabling on the outside, and you can have internal/external alarms on the same channel. Noise cancelation in cars? Put a microphone in


  • Microsoft wants to do more than make sure there are Windows-powered devices in every office, home, cell phone, and car.

    Then came the Big Three: speeches by Dell's Michael Dell, HP's Carly Fiorina, and Intel's Paul Otellini. All three PC companies now are fully ensconced in the world of consumer electronics, none more so than HP, which has wholeheartedly endorsed DRM as the wave of the future. And when someone endorses DRM these days, Hollywood pays tribute. Ben Affleck, Doctor Dre, Alicia Keys, and The Ed
    • The Register covered [theregister.co.uk] Carly's desicion to endorse closedness and control on Friday. At least it is good to know that HP are honest about exactly where they stand, unlike the wishy-washy contradictiveness of other companies that try to avoid the issue.

      On the whole, it does not worry me that much. If Carly had announced that HP was in partnership with MS to support and develop Palladium that would have bothered me a lot more. That may be coming (as you say), but it seems more likely to me that HP are really
    • Perhaps more people will switch over to Linux once they learn their days of free downloading may be over if they stick with Microsoft?

      Your assuming they will be able to. Seeing how soon motherboards with be DRMed possibly from the bios to the cpu, I doubt they will be able to install any version of linux unless its complies and is "trusted." And seeing how all the major OEM have decided to "officially" embrace DRM we could have a serious problem. First you are going to likely see non-DRM products

  • Why clone the Segway? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CottonEyedJoe ( 177704 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:21PM (#7945207) Journal
    I'm the first to admit its a neat idea if the Segway werent eclipsed by the venerable bicycle in nearly every respect. For the price of a Segway you can buy a nearly weightless (15 lbs) carbon fiber bike that Lance Armstrong would be proud to ride, and with a few weeks of practice, any reasonably healthy person could out pace and out distance any Segway.

    For $1000 youre still talking about a nice shiny new "bike shop" bike that would run the clone into the dirt. Heck, even a $150 Wal Mart special would have no trouble in that regard.
    • It's worth considering that the segway was initially created for the disabled, who can't use a bike. I think it's succeeded admirably in that regard, actually.
    • any reasonably healthy person could out pace and out distance any Segway.

      So healthy persons are not the Segway's target market.
      We're talking about a guy who makes fancy balancing wheelchairs, the segway is more like a fancy motorized "walker" (what do you call them 4-legged cane-like things elderly people walk around with?).

      its a neat idea if the Segway werent eclipsed by the venerable bicycle in nearly every respect.

      From your young, healthy point of view. But for someone who's proud to be able to sta
      • My grandmother has osteoperosis. Would you buy her a segway? I think that the group of people who can't walk, but would not be severely injured by a fall from a segway is vanishingly small.
      • >So healthy persons are not the Segway's target market.

        Close, but the Segway is a yuppie toy, not a next-gen wheelchair. The next generation Segway will be the device that made Baron Harkonen float around.
    • Cause you won't want to ride your bike four miles in a business suit on a day after it's rained. You won't have very many nice suits if you do that too many times. Riding the segway, on the other hand, gets you to the office as clean as if you'd driven, minus the vehicle emissions.


    • I'm the first to admit its a neat idea if the Segway werent eclipsed by the venerable bicycle in nearly every respect

      ....

      and with a few weeks of practice, any reasonably healthy person could out pace and out distance any Segway.

      Could you ride that bike on a crowded sidewalk (local ordinances aside)? How about through an office hallway.
    • Why clone the Segway?

      For the price of a Segway

      You just answered your own question.

      It doesn't NEED to be that expensive. By a LONG shot.

      you can buy a nearly weightless (15 lbs) carbon fiber bike that Lance Armstrong would be proud to ride, and with a few weeks of practice, any reasonably healthy person could out pace and out distance any Segway.

      Try riding a carbon-fiber bicycle around indoors, at a crowded convention, in a buisness suit. B-)
      • Try riding a carbon-fiber bicycle around indoors, at a crowded convention, in a buisness suit. B-)

        Lazy b*stard - what is wrong with walking around a crowded convention, that's what most of us would do.

      • OK

        For the price of a segway, you can buy a nearly weightless (5 lbs) razor scooter that Lance Armstrong probably wouldn't be caught dead on, and with a few weeks of practice, any reasonably healthy person could out pace and out distance any Segway, indoors, at a crowded convention, in a business suit.

        In fact, for the price of a segway you can buy razor scooters for all the fat bastards on your corporate board and upper management. Now, wouldn't that be worth it to see your entire company "leadership" rid

  • Not a clone in the slightest... (Score:4, Informative)

    by EvilFrog ( 559066 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:23PM (#7945219)
    The "Segway Clone" is only a clone in the respect that it looks vaguely similar to one. All of the technological advances that make the Segway unique are missing.

    The entire point of the Segway is the gyroscopic balancing.

    I'm reminded of that "RoboSweep [slashdot.org]" that billed itself a "Roomba Clone".

  • Who submits? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Raleel ( 30913 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:30PM (#7945263)
    Does anyone else remember when slashdot used to be about nerds submitting articles that they had found on the web and thought were interesting? Now it seems there are a plethora of "self submitted" articles, and I think the quality has gone down. Take, for example, this one. It wasn't enough for someone else to say "hey, look, I found this article on pcmag.com showing off all this CES stuff." No, it had to be someone trying to drive up traffic to their site. Hell, even the username is a link to pcmag.

    Or the one the other day about the color alterations on the mars photos. Now, I'm almost willing to forgive this one, since it is pretty interesting, but on the other hand, the guy could have gotten the answer to his dilemma just by going to NASA's site.

    Remember when slashdot was about the wierd and wacky stuff on the internet? Like the lego porn page, or the telephone sex page (the one where telephones are having sex), the unix admin porn page, the site that you can telnet into and it does star wars (the movie) in ascii, and other things like this.

    I think I miss this the most about slashdot.
  • Do the editors/submitters ever RTFA before posting? It is not even remotely like a Segway. It has 4 wheels and uses conventional "twist the handlebars" steering. Rather than classifying this as an "underpriced segway" it should have been classified as an "overpriced scooter".

  • Stax (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tikal ( 24706 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:42PM (#7945335)
    I don't think this is the first transparent speaker ever to come to market. I say this because I spent a fair portion of my childhood in front of a pair of Stax [stax.co.jp] speakers -- the 6' high variety, two panels apiece. One of our audiophile friends had a pair of the 3' high speakers with only one panel each.

    You could indeed see through these; there was only a layer of something like a coarse cheesecloth in front of them, and a metal grill of sorts behind, protecting what I understood was a pair of sandwiched plastic layers that looked like celophane. Our cats would eye the whole arrangement from time to time and flex their claws. They learned to stay away from them eventually.

    This particular pair was a factory-rejected "showroom model", coming at a significant discount: the engineers had the bright idea of putting two LEDs on the bottom of the speakers to indicate whether you were overdriving the speakers. Green was loud but acceptable, and Red meant that you'd probably already committed one or more of the precious panels to the garbage. Unfortunately, their reviewers, who like to listen in dark rooms at high volume, found the presense of a bright green LED "distracting". The company purportedly removed it from subsequent models.

    The panels were apparently very low-yield -- something like only 11 pairs a year were manufactured, and it's seems pretty obvious from Stax's headphone-centric website that they're no longer making them. We did manage to get a replacement panel from them once, about 2 years after we purchased the speakers, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen again. The speakers had another problem recently with capacitors in their power supply leaking -- just recently we found a second batch when the second speaker's started going bad, but I don't believe they've been installed yet. A bit of a shame, really.

    As a side note, these speakers completely spoiled me -- nothing which I've had since sounds nearly as clear. With a good recording, you could close your eyes and completely lose yourself. These taught me to appreciate vinyl far more than I would have otherwise; with some listening and comparison, I could even understand why my father had gone with a tube amp rather than a solid state one...
  • Why screw around with this lame four-wheeled "scooter", when you can make your very own segway clone???

    http://www.tlb.org/scooter.html
  • If you look at the PC magazine picture there is an new menu option called "My Home". This is a third party application for home automation, I saw this at the house and thought this was the coolest thing of all. From this app you can control the lights, create mood scenes, play the media center music through the whole house and control each rooms audio level. There is some awsome security stuff where you can watch all of your security cameras, arm your house and even watch the security zones fire off as you
  • The speakers are made of LEXAN plastic which is the same material that those Nalgene bottles are made of.
  • Little gizmos for big machines on display at annual Detroit auto show [canoe.ca] The big thing seems to be LEDs on controls that you can change the colour of. Woohoo! And this one sounds like something out of Videodrome:

    Standard on the Mercedes-Benz S55 AMG sports sedan and the S600 luxury sedan are seats that circulate air through the cushion, drawing off perspiration in hot weather. The seats also can be programmed to "breathe," inflating and deflating twice each minute to relax the spine and back muscles.

    Now that

  • Can anyone post qrio.zip? I dont feel like registering.

    Yeah I'm lazy

    Anyway, looks like a pretty spiffy robot, would love to see it run.

  • Best PR quote ever... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mgcsinc ( 681597 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @04:05PM (#7946223)
    The best PR quote ever has got to be:

    "Although local governments have placed restrictions on riding Segways in crowded city streets, Wang said the same restrictions shouldn't apply to the Electric Chariot. "It's not a Segway," he said. "But we're going to say to the consumer, 'You bought it, you figure it out.'""

    This Segway imitiation is a joke; it's playing on the segway image with absolutly none of the same technology. This thing is more related to an senior-citizen mobility soloution, except you stand up. And it even has a name to match!
  • Every year we see technology like this come out (devices that turn any flat surface into a speaker, turn glass tables into speakers) but most of the time the sound isn't great.

    I have a Panasonic Panasonic SJ-MJ57 [panasonic.jp] Minidisc player that comes with clear speakers, even cool blue LEDs that light them up. The downside is that the sound is pretty bad.

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