Personal transporter

A personal transporter (also personal light electric vehicle, personal mobility device, electric rideable ) is a new class of compact portable electrically-powered electric vehicle for transporting an individual at speeds that don't normally exceed 25 kilometres per hour (16 mph), which includes electric skateboards, electric kick scooters, self-balancing unicycles and Segways.

Made possible by recent advances in vehicle battery and motor-control technologies, legislators are in the process of determining how these devices should be classified, regulated and accommodated during a period of rapid innovation. Unlike mobility aids such as wheelchairs and mobility scooters these devices are most commonly used by people with no registered mobility restriction.

A number of different form-factors for personal transporters have been developed in recent years on overlapping timeframes leveraging rapid improvements in battery, motor and control technologies since about 2000.

Dean Kamen applied for his first patent for a 'human transporter', now known as the Segway PT, in 1994. This was followed by other patent applications prior to its product launch in late 2001 and first deliveries to customers early in 2002.

Trevor Blackwell demonstrated a functional self-balancing unicycle based on the control-mechanism from a Segway PT in 2004 for which he published open source designs (see Eunicycle). Focus Designs released the first commercially available self-balancing unicycle (which had a seat) in 2008 and in 2010 Shane Chen, an American businessman and founder of Inventist, filed a patent for the more familiar and compact seatless device which his company, Inventis launched in 2011.

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