Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Two weeks after my iBOT flight

The bruise is mostly gone. I still have some wrist pain though. Strangely, the pain seems to be getting worse. I think I've been using it too much lately.

I talked to IT today and they said that they came up with nothing conclusive about what happened. Things get recorded in the black box only when in Balance, 4WD, or Stair Climbing. I was in Standard when it happened, therefore there wasn't anything in the black box about the incident.

I guess I'll never know for sure, but I'm 99% sure that when I got stuck on the threshold, I pushed the joystick forward thinking it would give it more power to get over the bump. When it suddenly became unstuck, it had that command stored up and it carried out what I had told it to do. I'll have to look in the manual to see if there is any warning about this. If there isn't, there should be.

The other possibility is that the dog leash got stuck on the joystick and pulled it forward. This is highly unlikely, especially considering the fact that I didn't run into my dog at all during the incident. She was on my left side, I went to the right. Had her leash been caught, it would have gone to the left, not right. I'm certain she was on my left side because had she been on the right side, I most definitely would have run into her.

Live and learn. I do not plan on anymore flights in my current iBOT. Maybe the next generation of the iBOT will have flying capabilities! :D

3 comments:

RehaDesign said...

Glad you are healing well. Are you in contact with any other IBOT owners? It would be interesting to know if any of them have experienced something similar. I wonder if there is an IBOT owners forum where you can exchange notes with other owners?

By the way, check out our blog for a new product from Segway which, if adapted could be something similar to the IBOT. It is a vehicle which rides on two wheels. Looks very futuristic. I wonder about your thoughts on it.

Shannon said...

Yes, I have heard from other iBOT owners that this sort of thing can happen. I glanced through my manual the other day and didn't see any warnings, but I don't know, there could be something in there as I didn't read the entire thing.

Now I know, and I won't be doing that again!

Regarding the PUMA.... I think it looks like a lot of fun to drive it, but I don't really know about it being modifiied to become a wheelchair. It's awfully large. Also, my favorite part about the iBOT is that it makes me taller, and the PUMA doesn't have that function. It's cool though, and I hope it succeeds!

Anonymous said...

Hi Shannon,

Just now checking your blog. So sorry to hear about your accident. From the sounds of it, things could have been much worse. In college I took a nosedive off some steps by accident. Miraculously, I landed on the foot plates and, "balanced" in that position until help arrived. Looking back I guess that was technically my first experience in "balanced mode"... :-). Hope you heal quickly.

Scott