This, according to Honda, is the future of personal mobility. (In the future, walking will be seen as passe and uncool.) It’s called the U3-X, and it just debuted in Tokyo. It’s sorta like a Segway, but a little less cumbersome (but just as unusual looking to the layman).
How fast does this bad boy go? Try 3.7 miles per hours—you can go from New York to San Francisco in just 810 hours! That’s about 33 days.
That’s being disingenuous, of course, since the U3-X isn’t made for long-distance travel, but rather urban walkabouts. Going here, going there, that kind of thing.
You probably already guessed this, but it’s designed for the elderly. That’s why we so so much robotics coming out of Japan: it has such a “rapidly” aging society that it has to constantly innovate and invent all these ‘helper’ robots.
It’s just a proof of concept for now, so don’t expect things like price or release date soon (if ever).
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