I can't expect a lay person to understand why we want blind children to drive. Blind navigation is my profession, so the responsibility for explaining this falls to my discipline.

There are six reasons:

One: Walking is often an inefficient method of mobility for blind kids, especially when distances are great and time is limited. Also, blind children frequently have an inefficient gait (called a blind gait) that slows their walking speed. Autonomous vehicles would serve the same role as vehicles do with any population, they boost efficiency. Blind kids have just as much right to assisted power (improved efficiency) as do physically impaired kids in wheelchairs.

Two: Technology is not just about solutions to practical problems. It is also about training. I use powered tri-carts (Amigos) when I teach echo location skills to blind kids. The increased speed of travel provides a steady input of sound clues that indicate either the presence of a wall or an opening. Blind kids eventually learn to hear walls and to hear openings (doorways, hallways). They also learn to estimate their distance from walls. They seem to learn this faster when driving (with my controlling the speed and turning of the cart). Also, I use the power carts to give the kids a sense of right and left turns at hallway intersections, and I use them initially to teach simple positional concepts like fast/slow, stop/go, straight/turn; straight/veer, "parallel a wall using sound", forward/back, up (an incline)/down (a ramp), 360 degree turn, 180 degree turn, and so on. Finally, the kids seem to grasp routes (the trip form classroom to the office, for example) when the trip is quickly navigated using power.

Three: It is very difficult to find a small room within which to teach spatial concepts to blind students. Rooms are cluttered with stuff along walls or they are too large to teach the concepts that blind kids need. I am always in search of a small smart space that I can use to teach the most basic orientation skills. There exists an entire body of literature in the blindness field devoted to small spaces as teaching environments. I envision that the inside of a smart vehicle for blind children will be a well planned "small space" teaching environment.

Four: Blind kids born today will have the advantage of very sophisticated navigation and communication technologies. When they reach age 20, it is a good bet that autonomous vehicles will be available to them. If they have been driving from a young age, they will be the safest, best trained blind drivers to come out of a school system. Furthermore, many of the advanced technologies that are emerging will enable blind individuals to communicate with smart environments. Many of these technologies will be wearable systems or hand held units. These systems will also be used to interface with (control) autonomous vehicles; knowledge in one area will cross over to the other.

Five: Autonomous vehicles can come in any number of designs. There could be smart bicycles, Segways, all terrain (off road) vehicles, "indoor only" or sidewalk vehicles (off road), and so on. Dan Kish, a blind CEO of a California technology company has a team of blind friends who ride mountain bikes using various technologies. His team is called the "Blind Bats". Autonomous vehicles provide blind kids with a new kind of recreation.

Six: Driving is incredibly motivating. It is a right-of-passage in our culture, a "coming of age" symbol. When kids are bored and resist training, I go get the Amigo.

I wonder what the reaction was when the first inventor put wheels on a chair. There must have been some troubled looks. The idea caught on and the concept "wheeled chair" became so ingrained that we don't even stop to analyze the word. We have the concept of "wheelchair" but we do not have a concept that describes a "blind chair". There is no industry (yet) that manufactures "blindchairs" (there must be a better name that describes these personal mobility/intelligent ground vehicles).

I am the chairman of a national committee mandated to study autonomous vehicles for the blind. This role came out of the 2005 World Congress on Blind Wayfinding Technologies.

On the IIBN board is a very talented mother of a blind teenager. Her husband is an engineer at Chrysler Corporation and he is very interested in the autonomous vehicle technology. Blind students would be the test pilots for the autonomous cars.

We are in the car capital of the planet. There is a sentimental reason to pioneer this concept here. We also have a wealth of automotive experts.

SVSU has a race car that it builds and maintains. There is already a university interest in technologies like this. SVSU professors have also worked closely with Millet Center staff on other technologies.

We have wheelchair experts in our community. Amigo was invented in Bridgeport, and Saginaw Medical and various other wheelchair organizations have ongoing ties with Millet Center staff. Millet Physical Therapists are wheelchair experts. They are exceptionally good at adapting technologies to the needs of individual students.

From the Governor's Technology Initiative to Saginaw Futures, there is an understanding that innovative, bold thinking is needed to move us off the doldrums of our industrial age habits. C.A.T is an answer to this need, but it will take risk takers and fearless futurists to take the first few steps.

It would draw the attention of the big guns: DARPA, NASA, NFB, the automotive industry, etc.

It sets up a need for smarter environments

It sets up the need for digital vision, wearable computing:

All examples tie into the field of Occupational Therapy, which just happens to be a major discipline centered at SVSU. The OT staff at SVSU also works closely with Millet staff.

We can build many kinds of vehicles based on the concepts we invent or develop: bicycles and Segways come immediately to mind.

There is a "cross over" of the technology to people with poor judgment, and those with situational and inattentional blindness (i.e. everybody who drives).

The exponential changes that drive Moore's Law will continue, at least until about the year 2020. That's a lot of doubling processing power. Expect wheelchairs to get very, very smart.

As smart space technology evolves in parallel with smart vehicle technology expect to see smart wheelchairs that can communicate with smart environments.

As the baby boomers age, expect the demand for wheelchairs to soar.

The technology used with intelligent ground vehicles will be applied to wheelchairs.

The technology used to create autonomous vehicles for the military and for adult populations will eventually be available for wheelchairs. Whether we think it a good idea or not, wheelchairs smart enough for self navigation will make it possible for blind individuals to drive.