Testing it was a long and labor intensive process with a first stage in simulation, then a second stage on a machine with all motors powered off except for the servos, then a run in 'air' but with a turning spindle and finally two real runs, one in aluminum and one in steel.

The electronics were tested separately, we found that one of the early mobile phones (ATF-3) was really good at getting latches to trip that shouldn't trip.

I learned a lot on that job, but it wasn't fun to work with the guy that ran that company, I wrote about this here:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-start-up-from-hell

Apologies for the missing images, I still have to do some re-routing of my old gallery.