yes, the segway's innovation was essentially a consequence of moore's law: consumer-oriented computers and sensors were small enough, fast enough, robust enough, and power-efficient enough to calculate dynamic stability for locomotion in real-time (my field of study in grad school).

it was awe-inspiring and admirable from an engineering standpoint, but painfully misapplied and dorky from a societal one.

kamen could have used this technological advance on any number of (existing) personal transport machines, but he chose to invent his own, as inventors are wont to do.