"From Ginger to the Segway^TM Human Transporter: 
Making the Transition from Research to Production"

Engineering practice focuses much attention on understanding customer needs, converting them to specifications and executing a producible design for the marketplace. In general, this methodology produces high quality, desirable products. Unfortunately, new technologies, with all their uncertainty and potential, do not lend themselves to the same approaches. Decisions must be made with incomplete information, design dependencies may be unclear. The uncertainty and ambiguity that motivate a research team can paralyze a product design team.

A class of dynamically stabilized transportation devices was developed a number of years ago at Deka Research and Development, one of which was named "Ginger". After several years as a research project, product development was initiated and in three years it was transformed into the SegwayTM Human Transporter. Dr. Morrell will discuss some of the tools, techniques, and team culture created by the Segway team as they accomplished this remarkable feat. 

Dr. John Morrell is the lead dynamics engineer for the Segway Human Transporter. He started with DEKA Research and Development in 1996 as the lead control engineer on the IBOT, a mobility device that allows disabled people to climb stairs and stand at eye-level by using dynamic stabilization technology.

In 1999, Dr. Morrell joined a team to develop the control software and system design of a two-wheeled mobility device code named "Ginger." For the past three years, he has lead the development of many of the core technologies for the Segway Transporter including development of control architectures and algorithms and their implementation into production software.

Dr. Morrell graduated from Yale in 1986 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. After two years at Apfel Enterprises in New Haven, CT, he went on to earn a Master's degree at the University of Washington in 1990 and a Ph.D. at M.I.T in 1995. Currently, he manages Dynamics and Software Development at Segway.  

During the talk at Yale