
Students in Switzerland build a wheelchair that climbs stairs - serengeti
http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/17/students-in-switzerland-built-a-wheelchair-that-knows-how-to-climb-stairs/
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Paperweight
The inventor of the Segway first invented a far superior stair-climbing
wheelchair, the iBOT, way back in 2003, but it was regulated out of existence.

[http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/02/11/ibot-discontinued-
unfo...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/02/11/ibot-discontinued-unfortunate-
disabled-perhaps-budding-robotics-opportunity)

However, the FDA recently reclassified it so it may be put back into
production within a couple of years.

[http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMe...](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/MedicalDevices/MedicalDevicesAdvisoryCommittee/OrthopaedicandRehabilitationDevicesPanel/UCM378315.pdf)

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TrevorJ
Hmm, that's interesting. Comparing the two sets of images, the Segway one
certainly _looks_ far less safe that it actually is, I wonder if it fell
victim to that gut reaction.

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nogridbag
My mother is wheelchair bound. A stair climbing powered wheelchair would be
useful to get over 1-2 small steps at restaurants. She would never in a
million years use it for the use case in the video. Most people don't realize
how scary it is even to go up and down steep wheelchair ramps in a power chair
(especially for elderly). Going up, as shown in the video, is one thing -
going down is probably terrifying. For instance, to account for a steep
decline, you have to tilt the seat back at an extreme angle. You can no longer
see where you're going! It is probably most similar to going up the lift hill
on a roller coaster where you're tilted back looking up at the sky.... except
you're going down in a direction you cannot see, you're in full control and
you can easily screw up at any moment if you get nervous and panic. It's not
something the person in the chair can easily do on their own.

In the USA, there's a large influx of amputees because of the recent wars. I
can imagine most of those younger men and women can handle climbing stairs in
this thing, but at the same time most of them are fit enough to wear
prosthetics and can probably just walk up.

So it is a problem, but I think the solution has to involve making the person
in the chair feel 100% safe and comfortable.

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seanmcdirmid
This is similar to riding a Tibetan horse in the mountains. Going up is well
enough, but going down...wow, pretty scary and I would imagine any legged
vehicle would be similar.

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DIVx0
I wonder how well this would work on carpeted stairs? Since the treads are
gripping only the 'nose' of the stair is there the possibility of slippage on
the pile? What if the padding gave way or the treads pulled the carpet away
from the stair?

How well would this chair recover from scenarios like this? Or in any failure
for that matter.

It certainly looks like it has a lot of promise!

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Asbostos
It probably won't be a problem because people sometimes walk like that one
stairs too (at least I do!). For walking the loads would be higher because
they're concentrated on one foot on one edge of one step. The failure mode of
the carpet pulling away is interesting though! A walking person might just
fall onto the next step while this wheelchair looks like it could keep popping
the carpet out step by step as it falls all the way down.

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Avshalom
Was anyone paying attention when the Dean Kamen wheelchair stopped being made?
Was it cost/demand, didn't work? The wikipedia article says something about
the FDA reclassifying it but that doesn't seem to explain why it stopped being
made.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT)

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maxerickson
It sounds like the market was too small:

[http://forums.segwaychat.org/archive/index.php/t-20984.html](http://forums.segwaychat.org/archive/index.php/t-20984.html)

I looked at the iBOT page in the Wayback Machine, it jumps from a sales page
to a page with a statement they aren't selling it anymore.

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devit
As mentioned in one on the comments on the article, a patent for something
very similar was filed with 1988 priority in the US:
[https://www.google.com/patents/US5123495](https://www.google.com/patents/US5123495)

Wonder why it hasn't made to the market in the 27 years since that patent?

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TheSpiceIsLife
I live in Australia, here stair climbing wheelchairs are obviated by
wheelchair ramps in to every public use building and commercial building.
Wheelchair bound people are also given subsidies to have ramps installed at
their homes too.

Additionally, I'd hazard a guess that price effects consumer uptake. If the
the stair climbing feature costs, probably at least(?), $5,000 to $10,000
dollars extra fewer people are likely interest.

edit: a word and a space

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c3534l
That video is really melodramatic. It's a guy slowly ascending a staircase
with these crazy dynamic shots and music that would be more appropriate for a
compilation of airshow maneuvers. That said, it doesn't look technologically
like it's all that interesting unless they've managed to make it super-cheap.

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kragen
If it's at all affordable for people who are confined to wheelchairs, a
working stair-climbing wheelchair would be a life-changer for tens or hundreds
of millions of people. Airshow maneuvers, by comparison, are pretty, but also
pretty unimportant.

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po
Reminds me of these Japanese stair-climbing hand-trucks that you see delivery
people using to get supplies into the shops in the subway stations:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCEglW9e5EQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCEglW9e5EQ)

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betimsl
This probably weighs 12 tonnes.

