what happens if I drive it down stairs?
We are using the Hokuyo Lidar sensor: http://www.hokuyo-aut.jp/02sensor/07scanner/urg_04lx_ug01.ht... which sees an ankle height slice of the world so stairs down are invisible to us at the moment. :/
I believe there might also be a ROS package that detects ankles (well, legs) in 2D scans, which could help.