Shane Chen rides the latest version of his Solowheel, a gyro-stabilized electric unicycle, near his office and workshop in Camas, Washington, on Nov. 29, 2017. (Elliot Njus/Staff)

By Elliot Njus | The Oregonian/OregonLive

For a few months in 2015, no sufficiently famous person had to suffer the indignity of walking in an airport or onstage during a late-night show.

Instead, they could glide along on a hoverboard. A litany of celebrity endorsements on TV and social media helped make the two-wheeled, self-balancing platform one of the hottest holiday gifts of the year. Retailers struggled to keep it in stock.

From his workshop in Camas, Washington, Shane Chen watched his brainchild take off like none of his other inventions. Chen had patented his two-wheeled, self-balancing Hovertrax scooter back in 2012.

There was just one problem: Chen was stuck on the sidelines. The market was flooded with knockoffs, whose manufacturers in China paid little mind to Chen’s patent. To make matters worse, the underpowered knockoffs had a propensity to overheat and catch fire. Lawsuits followed, and the craze died down.

“I’m proud of my invention, but then people, just for money, made it so cheap,” Chen said. “Inventions are supposed to help the world, not make people unsafe.”

In any case, the hoverboard was never supposed to be Chen’s breakout invention. It was just a diversion from his years-long effort to crack one of the toughest riddles in urban transportation: the “last mile” problem of getting people from transit to their final destination.

His latest attempt, which Chen calls IOTAtrax, was unveiled this month at the annual CES gadget show in Las Vegas. The Portland-based website Digital Trends earlier this month recognized the device as the top "rideable" technology at the show.

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Shane Chen in the offices of his firm, Inventist Inc., on Nov. 29, 2017. (Elliot Njus/Staff)

Chen, who was born in Beijing, earned a degree in agricultural meteorology — the study of weather as it relates to farming — before moving to the United States in 1986.

He worked as a product designer for a maker of science instruments before launching his own devices company, CID Bio-Science. He sold that company in 2009 to focus on Inventist, a firm that focused on consumer products.

His athletic pastimes — speed skating, swimming and wind surfer — helped inspire some of his earlier creations, including AquaSkipper, a watercraft propelled by the rider jumping up and down, and several new takes on roller skates.

Soon he turned his attention to commuting. To Chen’s mind, many people aren’t using public transportation because they don’t want to walk from their home or work to a bus or rail stop.

“In order to close that gap, you have to ride something,” he said. “To solve that problem, I just made a one-wheeled bike.”

Chen first introduced that one-wheeled bike — with a battery-powered motor and gyroscopes for balance — in 2009. Solowheel quickly attracted national attention in tech circles.

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Shane Chen with the latest version of the Solowheel near his Camas, Washington, office. (Elliot Njus/Staff)

By then, the Segway PT — the scooter introduced in 2001 with two wheels and a handlebar — had fallen from grace. Once hyped as the future of transportation, it quickly became a punchline.

The Solowheel never reached the mainstream consciousness of the Segway, or the hoverboard for that matter, but Chen said his company has sold about 10,000 of the devices.

And it’s attracted imitators. Ninebot, the Chinese company that would later acquire Segway, introduced its own self-balancing unicycle, which is now sold under the Segway brand.

They remain a rare sight in Portland but are somewhat more common in downtown Seattle.

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Brandon Boyd, 31, commutes about a mile and a half to work at a Seattle startup. He used to walk, but in 2016 started shopping around for an option to make the trip a little easier.

He looked at electronic rideables, including electric skateboards that couldn’t navigate the terrain and electronic bikes, which were too expensive. A Solowheel split the difference. He learned to ride in less than 30 minutes and now commutes on a Solowheel daily, in almost all weather.

“You can navigate some pretty poor road conditions,” he said. “From a practicality standpoint … it’s kind of silly that more people don’t use them right now.”

But there’s still the Segway problem. “People look at you like you’re an idiot,” Boyd said.

And then there’s the occasional snide remark from passers-by who see them as a symbol of the city’s new tech elite. But for many riders, Boyd said, a “wheel” takes the place of a far more expensive car.

“It gets a bad rap as an expensive toy,” Boyd said, “which is not how the people that I know that ride them regularly use them.”

The idea for Hovertrax came when Chen saw his daughter riding two Solowheels at a time, one foot on each. A 2013 Kickstarter campaign, promising a brand-new product that was practical and easy to use, raised $85,744.

But the design was quickly copied, and then the copies copied. Chen sued some of the Chinese companies that began churning out hoverboards, but eventually licensed his patent to RazorUSA, the company whose folding kick scooters were an early 2000s craze. That company has carried on the litigation.

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An undated handout photo of IOTAtrax, a hybrid between the hoverboard and Shane Chen's earlier invention, the Solowheel. (Inventist Inc.)

Chen’s latest device, IOTAtrax, is more of a Solowheel-hoverboard hybrid.

Like a hoverboard, it has two wheels, making it easier to balance. But both wheels are between the user’s legs, like a Solowheel. It also weighs only 15 pounds, about half the heft of the latest Solowheel. Now available for preorder, it’s expected to retail at $599 when it’s released in late February.

While the hoverboard was basically a new combination of existing technology, IOTAtrax includes a novel steering system that Chen hopes will make it harder to copy.

And he hopes it’s the product that can make electronic rideables a more mainstream way of getting around.

“It’s much easier to learn, but it’s still different from a hoverboard,” he said. “People probably realize by now you can’t use it for transportation. IOTA, you can.”

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-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus