The Turtle trainer has gone through several stages of development.

The first Turtle Trainer was built at the Paul Valley State school, (now called the Southern Oklahoma Resource Center) in 1988 and 89. As detailed in the RESNA paper presented in 1990, it was a large wooden platform mounted on wheelchair casters and used ABEC fireball wheelchair motors. It was large enough to protect the elevating leg rests of any user at the facility and was built in the Assistive Technology shop by "Boots" Holder and Woody Harrison. The electronics were made by Clint South from my design and allowed separate switches for each direction to be operated by the user. Acceleration and speed limiting were performed by a Du-it AL1 speed limiter. For reasons lost to history, it was painted green, and was named the Turtle Trainer by John Stevens, an occupational therapist at the center.

Realizing the limits of the electronics used in the original Turtle Trainer, I developed a microprocessor based speed controller, which allowed for multiple switch, single switch directional scanning, and joysticks to be used to control speed and direction. Taking into account the effort required to take the prototype to a finished manufactured product and that I was reinventing the wheel from existing wheelchair controllers, I stopped development.

The third prototype used Invacare motors and Mark II electronics. These were mounted on a large, folding wooden platform, and exhibited at the 1997 RESNA. This unit is currently for sale as a one of a kind special. Because the cost of sanding and finishing wood is equal to that of using metal, current Turtle Trainers use diamond plate for the base. The current Turtle Trainer was exhibited at the 1998 RESNA. Since that time, The Three Dimensional Control Mounting System has been added, allowing controls to be mounted to the Turtle rather than the user's wheelchair.

Written by Mark Bresler