I was intrigued by the Hot Wheels video we saw in class so I decided to do some research on what happened to the invention. After we talked about it in class I was curious and this is what I found...
http://www.mobilitymgmt.com/Articles/2009/02/01/Independence-Technology-Discontinues-the-iBOT.aspx
The long and short of it is that the chair seemed good in theory and was successful at certain tasks, like climbing stairs as we saw in the video, but it left more to be desired when it came to hand held controls and tilt options, as well as weight capacity. When Independence Technology's 5 year contract was up they decided to discontinue the chair stating there wasn't enough of a demand. There were also issues with medicare and its coverage of the chair as an elevating system. The idea seemed almost too good to be true, and I guess, for now, it was.
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