[KenWittlief]

failure analysis and design redundancy are major engineering disciplines.

these things are not left to chance. Military jets, like the F18 or the stealth fighter, would tear themselves apart in a fraction of a second if their fly-by-wire control systems ever failed (esp at mach 2).

as far as I know, its never happened, because the engineers design the system so that, if any given component fails, there are at least two more that take over, and the system keeps running without a glitch.

The fact that the IBOT has passed all the regulatory tests for its application is an indication of how well it it designed.

The IBOT wheelchair is near the top of the list of things that make me proud to be an engineer :^)