Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "New Wheels Help Wheelchairs Climb Stairs" video.

@william3100 Umm, what? If you've got a wheel that's designed to do things like go over curbs, it's going to be put on a wheel chair, that's one of the more obvious uses for it.
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@madokachan You must be new here. Most of the time these sorts of things seem to be used to make things worse if there's a buck in it for that.
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This will make it so that pushing them on good surfaces is as annoying as pushing them over obstacles and pushing them over obstacles just about as annoying as before. There's a reason why this isn't already on the market.
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The main issue is that they don't appear to have a way of shifting the seat forward and backward. If they could do that, it would make it a lot safer to traverse stairs. As long as the seat is shifted slightly toward the upper stair, you won't fall down the stairs, the worst case would be sliding down the stairs.
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TBH, I think they'd probably be better off replacing the wheel with tank treads. And just have the ability to reconfigure the shape between a round wheel and tank treads. It's probably possible to build a tire that could handle both positions. Although you'd need to add suspension elsewhere as that likely would be a very rough ride.
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@weltschmerzistofthaufig2440 There's been decades of work on changing the environment and at this point, it's mostly a matter of waiting for the buildings to be rebuilt. The number of places where you can't go is shrinking every year.
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Not really, at most this solves the problem of going over curbs, which really should be a less and less common issue as more places require curb cuts wherever there's a crosswalk. New buildings generally require that there be allowances made to permit people in mobility scooters and wheelchairs to gain access to the building. And as other folks have pointed out, it's going to require a lot more battery power to operate something with this.
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@xavierb9061 This is probably fine going over a curb, which would be a major win as there's still plenty of places in the US that don't have ADA compliant curb cuts to allow wheel chairs and mobility scooters over the edge. Going up or down stairs with this would be a lot safer if the chair could shift forward or back a few inches to keep the person in it over the upper stair when going down.
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It's even worse, the friction causes the tire to wear out significantly more quickly than if it were properly inflated.
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On the whole it's easier to just install elevators and ramps. The main reason why it can be a pain getting around for folks in mobility scooters and wheel chairs has to do with how much legacy stuff is out there and a failure to properly maintain it when it is in there.
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And, it will require a motor with a more powerful battery to handle the increased friction.
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