[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.

[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.

[lostlogin]

Good thought. I work with people who are quite often wheelchair bound and with many of them the fear of falling is very apparent and obviously logical.