Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 7 Segway
person on a wheel-chair, you can come into the house directly without parking your
car in your garage. Then, the design of a house and a means of transportation will
be integrated into one.
P.U.M.A. stands for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility. But if we drop
“Urban”, then it comes to Personal Mobility and Accessibility and it is nothing
other than the words used in assistive technology to assist the body movement of
the disabled or physically handicapped person. In fact, Dean Kamen developed
Segway (“Segway PT”, 2001) because his
!
first idea of developing a sophisticated
wheel chair was not approved by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
so he changed it to Segway. P.U.M.A. is a revival of his original idea of a wheel
chair. But this time he developed it not only for the disabled, but for all of us by
introducing the idea of “urban” mobility.
Indeed, why we need transportation is because we are disabled or physically
handicapped to reach to the destination using our body alone. In this sense, able-
bodied or disabled- does not make any difference. It is just a matter of degree. We
are all disabled in this sense.
If we think this way, then why do we have to distinguish a wheel chair from a
car? In fact, P.U.M.A. is nothing other than a wheel chair. And a car is in fact
covered chairs on wheels. What are their differences? We regard them as separate
