Tuesday, November 20, 2007

It happened

I went through a store theft detector while in
Balance Function. There is a warning in the iBOT
manual about this. It says to never go through
one while in balance. It says doing so could
result in serious injury or death. My rep told
me that someone went through one once while in
balance. It threw her forward and out of the
chair. She wasn't seriously injured though.

I'm always careful about looking out for them.
And now after having the BOT for less than 2 months,
I've already messed up. Luckily for me, nothing
happened. I don't know why. There was only
one detector instead of one on each side of
the door like you usually see. Maybe that is
the reason nothing happened. I don't know. It
scared me though.

I've said this before, but I'm going to say it
again - they need to fix this issue!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow!! aren't you the lucky one! maybe it was because there was only one security thingy!! I am still really amazed that the iBOT is effected by them. I'm really glad nothing happened and that you are o. x

Unknown said...

that was meant to be OK! oops :)

Unknown said...

It strikes me that it should not be too difficult to design a monitor that would generate a warning when it detects an electromagnetic field greater than some threshold value. It could be built into the iBOT's control unit, and only activated when in balance mode. That would give the user a warning (for example, audible) to stop and get down on all four wheels before proceeding.
Without something like that, their caution about bodily harm, etc. is not a whole lot more than covering their own asses from liability in the event someone does get hurt, as not only is it not always obvious that there's an anti-theft device in the vicinity, but it's clearly very easy to simply forget in the course of a normal life.
- Richard.

Unknown said...

On the other hand, it shouldn't be prohibitively difficult to shield the thing adequately to prevent mishaps.
- Richard

Anonymous said...

I work where we make the ibot. I will bring this up!! Thanks for your blog...it makes going to work a lot easier.

Shannon said...

P, I'm so glad I didn't fall out! It would have been embarassing and I could have possibly gotten hurt.

Richard, yes, it is easy to forget to always look. I think I'm pretty good at it normally, but in this case I was going into a bookstore in an old, dark building. It was really bright outside, and dark inside. The doorway was really narrow. The detector was only on one side. I just didn't see it... I don't know much about technology, but my gosh, all the things that the iBOT can do, I'd think they could make it so that it doesn't tip over when going through a theft detector!!!

Anonymous, thank you! Thanks for helping make the iBOT, thanks for reading the blog, thanks for the nice comment, and thanks for bringing up the subject to your co-workers. It would be wonderful to have this issue fixed. Not just because of the potential harm it could cause, but also because it's a pain in the butt to always go in and out of balance.

Anonymous said...

When you went through the detector did the ibot just drop straight down or what?? Just to let you know I am on the 6th appeal with insurance. I just can't get through to them that this is a great chair inside and out. Even with letters from doctors stating that this is the right chair. The last denial was that this is more of a community chair that for home use.

Shannon said...

Anonymous, I've responded in today's blog entry.