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I wonder if they have any plans on dealing with stairs. Honestly I think the arm freedom is a big deal so I think they could come up with some novel ideas for stairs or other terrain. Bipedal movement (or I guess any number of legs) is impressive in that it can handle a variety of terrain.

A trite and cheesy observation... it seems we are trying to make machines learn to walk and humans learn to roll :)

All in all I think the product/idea are great.

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The iBot was able to "walk" up and down stairs: http://www.dekaresearch.com/ibot.shtml

In retrospect, it's a bit surprising they never enhanced it to operate hands free like this - it was made by the same folks as the segway and feels like a natural evolution.

I remember talking about the iBot with a wheelchair bound friend when it came out.

His response was "the people who designed this have obviously never been bound to a wheelchair". I think I was in 9th or 10th grade at the time, so I don't remember his reasoning, but I remember the disdain for the invention.

Any iBot users out there that could chime in?

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