My new take on my dream machine led me to fundamentally change everything. I stopped thinking of creating the most advanced car and started thinking about what I really want. I want to be able to go anywhere, effortlessly. An Iron Man suit wasn’t (and still isn’t) on the radar. Remembering how one of those Bobcat skid steers I used to see on construction sites, I started there. It was compact. It could go where I couldn’t, or didn’t want to walk. It had the basics. It just needed more utility. No of my car heroes had a copilot, so neither would I. The answer, make the Bobcat bigger, or shrink the Racoon. The Racoon had much more utility and actual roadworthiness. What I got was my take on a Pontiac Fiero and Renault Racoon hybrid.

The design eventually settled on a single seat rover. In the above image, some of those Racoon design traits can be seen. The circular center body hinge grew into a rounded underbody. The obloid canopy is now a single piece, bubble dome. The swooping lines, front to back. It was ready to hit the off-road. Just like in all the Renault promo images. The problem was, this is more of an off-road capable vehicle. It has all-wheel and 4 wheel steering. Nothing new. Just a really advanced SUV.

While working at my the office job, being lazy, I started rolling my office chair around the office, rather than getting off my ass to go to a file cabinet. It hit me that this was ultimately lateral mobility. Still nothing new. Mars Rover, certain construction vehicles use caster to turn. Regular cars don’t, though. The challenge became adapting an office chair wheelbase to a truck. Making my vehicle modular hadn’t yet occurred to me, it just happened out of necessity. Individually designing the suspension to accommodate the project led me to trying to piece together modules that worked fine on their own, but had to work with other independent systems. This was broken down to giving the chair’s legs and casters the desired stance, and plopping the cabin where the chair’s seat would normally be and design from there. The design is nothing more than a 4 legged office chair wheelbase with an aerodynamic body and hidden gadgets all around. Again, nothing special about an office chair. The small detail was me. I was imagining a vehicle to go anywhere and do anything but I was missing the most important part of it all. None of it matters if I’m not in it. I don’t work in construction anymore. I worked in an office.

Being a daydreamer, working in an office, I imagined being in a virtual world. I thought, how can I see the world but never have to get out of this chair? What if I became quadriplegic? After all, I wasn’t young anymore. I pictured myself in the worst physical condition and didn’t have anyone. How could I still see the world? My project became the world’s most capable wheelchair. Personal mobility led me into robotics, to augmented reality, and now to where I have a pretty comprehensive design. Now that I’ve immerged from that design rabbit hole. I’m on the hunt to turn this highly capable wheelchair into more than a dream. I don’t know how it will end but for me, it’s build, or die trying.