Hi.

This dune buggy that a blind person can drive has me asking questions.  What
was the course like?  Were there other vehicles on it?  What about traffic
lights?

I'm reminded about what Ferriday said about his success about getting a wire
to revolve around a magnet.  Someone asked him, "What good does that do?"
His reply was, "What will a baby be after its first steps?"  His little
device turned out to be the first electric motor.

I read articles like this with curiosity.  Perhaps this project will be the
beginning of cars that the blind can drive safely, or maybe something better
is out there, waiting to be used.  I remember talking to someone about
synthetic speech.  This discussion was happening in 1975 or 1976.  I said
that it would be real neat to hear human quality speech from a computer.
The person I was talking to said it would never happen.  "The best we can
expect", he said, "is to get a robot sounding voice, and it would pause
between words."  Well, look at the speech algorithms we have now.  It's true
that the real good ones are expensive to get, and they require a lot of CPU,
but the hardware will catch up, and even better things are waiting out
there.

In short, don't just say this idea is stupid.  It's true that there may be a
better solution out there, but you never know what will be around.  Just
look back 15 years ago.  The internet was just beginning to be used by the
general public.  For me, it's something I use every day.  I can't wait to
see what comes along!

Have a great day, and don't work too hard.

Kevin Minor
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