Being at eye level packs an emotional wallop, say those who have tried the IBOT.

The IBOT, the futuristic stair-climbing, beach-crossing, body-lifting wheelchair, is in clinical trials and won't go on sale until sometime next year. That's the latest word from a tight-lipped spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, the international drug giant that plans to market the chair once it gets the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration.

Invented by Dean Kamen, the medical world's Thomas Edison, the revolutionary chair ["IBOT, " NM February 2000] will sell for between $20,000 and $25,000 and is packed with gyros, sensors and very sophisticated software that allow it to stabilize itself as it goes up and down stairs and climbs over obstacles. It also can balance perfectly on two wheels, moving as the user shifts weight. Those who have tried it say being raised to eye level with standing people packs an emotional wallop for almost everyone, but especially wheelchair users.

"It is a standing world. You get accustomed to sitting down but when you get to eye level with everyone else, well, you just notice it," says Rory A. Cooper, who is running clinical trials on the IBOT at the University of Pittsburgh and is a wheelchair user himself. "It is really something to be up and balanced and interacting with colleagues."

Cooper, a man not given to overstatement, is the chief engineer at the University's Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. The department recently won a $1.6 million federal grant for a Model Center on Spinal Cord Injury, with an emphasis on adaptive technology. One of its first assignments is testing the chair, officially called the Independence 3000 IBOT Transporter.

"We are trying to determine what its potential benefits are," says Cooper. How does being able to go upstairs and to reach high objects change functional ability?" One of the project's long-term goals is to see if the IBOT has a positive effect on employment. Cooper hopes to complete initial studies and turn them over to the FDA by the end of the year.

The clinic has 10 IBOT chairs for its trials. So far it has completed a small pilot study where two paras and two quads used IBOTs at their jobs for a day. They all generally liked them, but the quads liked them the most. That's probably because they are more familiar with power chairs, says Cooper. DEKA Research & Development in Manchester, N.H., is simultaneously running a second set of trials. DEKA, Kamen's privately held company, is where he invented the IBOT.

Since the beginning of the year, Kamen and his lab have been the focus of wild press speculation that has little to do with the IBOT. It began when news leaked that the Harvard Business School Press paid a writer $250,000 for a book revealing Kamen's newest and still very secret invention, code name Ginger.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs supposedly predicted that they will be building cities around Ginger. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and venture capitalist John Doerr reportedly have invested millions in it. Experts speculate that Ginger is a personal scooter based on IBOT technology, an anti-gravity machine, a helicopter backpack or even a new type of energy source.

At DEKA they're not answering questions about Ginger or the IBOT. They refer all queries about the wheelchair to Johnson & Johnson. A spokesman there would only say: "I can tell you that we're making significant progress and we continue to improve the product. [The IBOT] is an investigational device so we have to be very careful about what we say in terms of public relations. We can't promote the device."

Kamen himself doesn't seem shy about showing off the IBOT. After then-President Clinton awarded him a National Medal of Technology in January, the 50-year-old multimillionaire innovator was photographed riding it around the White House. He also attracted wide coverage when he piloted the chair up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Will the IBOT be the wheelchair of the future? Cooper hopes so. "It is certainly a leap forward in technology. It seems obvious that it will help people on the job. However, being a scientist, I have to wait for the data," he adds with characteristic caution.

The biggest question about the IBOT may ultimately come down to two unresolved issues: Will insurance companies pay for the IBOT, and how will they determine who qualifies?

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