[nabs-l] Blind Driver Challenge: The Interface that Touches theMind

[Sarah Alawami]

I was there for that speach! Wow! and I did try some of the technology and I can't describe it in words.

S
On Nov 13, 2010, at 11:40 AM, Joe Orozco wrote:

> Subject: [Njabs-talk] Blind Driver Challenge: The Interface that Touches
> theMind
> 
> 
> The Interface that Touches the Mind:
> 					Advancing Beyond Autonomous Vehicles
> 							   by Dennis Hong
> 
> On Thursday afternoon, July 8, 2010, Dr. Dennis Hong,
> director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at the Virginia
> Polytechnic Institute, addressed the convention. He is leading the group 
> of Virginia Tech engineering students who are working with the NFB to 
> develop the blind-drivable car. Here is what Dr. Hong said:
> 
> 	  Driving-sighted people like me, we do it every day, and we take it
> 
> for granted. When you need to go to the grocery store, you just get in your
> 
> car and start driving. You drive to school, pick up your dearly loved 
> children, and then take them to soccer practice. You hit the open road and
> enjoy a
> road trip with your friends and family with freedom and joy. Well, in
> modern society driving is really a necessity. It takes you from point A 
> to point B. It's a means of getting you to your destination whenever and
> wherever that may be. At the same time driving is fun and exciting. Some
> people even consider it an expression of power. However, most important,
> driving is really about freedom. Driving is really about independence.
> Unfortunately, however, not everyone has the privilege of driving, mostly
> because of physical challenges, blindness being one of the reasons
> affecting people the most.
>  We want to change this. We want to give the blind the ability to
> drive. So in 2007 Virginia Tech accepted a challenge proposed by the
> National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute to develop a car that
> can be driven by the blind safely and independently. It was called the
> Blind Driver Challenge. As far as I know, we are the only group in the
> nation that has accepted this call. A lot of people thought we were 
> crazy.
> Some people still do, and, as a matter of fact, to be honest, half the 
> time I actually think we are crazy myself.
> But the real story behind the challenge goes like this. At the time
> when NFB announced the Blind Driver Challenge, we already had a very 
> active research program in autonomous vehicles at Virginia Tech. For
> example, we
> won third place at the DARPA Urban Challenge and won a 
> half-million-dollar
> award. This competition was about developing a fully autonomous vehicle
> that can maneuver a sixty-mile course in the urban environment. The 
> vehicle had to obey all the California traffic laws, merge into moving
> traffic,
> navigate traffic circles, negotiate intersections, avoid a variety of 
> free-standing obstacles, and even park itself--all with no human
> intervention.
> So we thought we could tackle the challenge proposed by the NFB. We had
> already successfully developed an autonomous vehicle, so we thought, "How
> hard could it be to develop a car for the blind?" Well, we couldn't have
> been more wrong. We quickly realized that what the NFB wanted was not a
> vehicle that could drive a blind person around, but rather a vehicle that
> a blind person could actually operate by making active decisions.
> Realizing this, we had to start from scratch; we had to go back to 
> the drawing board and rethink how we could pull it off. Sometimes we
> doubted
> whether it was even possible, but, when we realized the importance of 
> this mission for the blind community and the huge positive impact it could 
> have on society, we understood that the potential for the technologies
> we'll 
> be developing along the way would have more far-reaching impact than just
> driving. So in 2008, with thirteen very talented and hard-working, smart
> undergraduate students and only $3,000 in funding, we started developing
> our first vehicle for the blind.
> Let me tell you a story. I still remember when the folks from the 
> NFB first visited my lab, the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa)
> at
> Virginia Tech, and the stupid mistakes and awkward situations I created 
> due to lack of experience and understanding of blindness. At the time I did
> 
> not know anyone personally who was blind, and I do not have any blind
> members
> of my family, so I had all those stereotypes in my head about blind 
> people and erroneous assumptions about blindness.
> Though we are good friends now, I have to confess that I felt very
> uncomfortable when I first met Mark Riccobono, the executive director of
> the NFB Jernigan Institute. He was the very first blind person that I had
> a true conversation and interaction with. When he first visited our lab a 
> few years ago, actually I was not at all prepared. I didn't know what to do.
> 
> We have so many visitors through our lab from high-profile sponsors to K-12
> students, so we are always ready and prepared to greet visitors and give
> tours. However, that day, when Mark came to our lab in the basement of
> Randolph Hall, he was sharply dressed in a suit and tie as usual. First I
> tried to grab his arm to guide him. I was giving a tour of our 
> laboratory,
> and I constantly said, "As you can see," then I quickly remembered and
> thought to myself, "Ahho, I just said, `As you can see' to this blind 
> man," which then created this awkward pause. I know better now. Then in the
> afternoon I remembered the movie, Daredevil, with Ben Affleck, this 
> heroic blind guy. I wanted to be polite and actually brushed my teeth twice
> 
> after lunch, remembering from the movie that blind people have a
> heightened,
> almost super-hero-like ability to smell. You might laugh, but that was 
> how I thought of the blind at the time. You would be surprised how many 
> people in our society still think the way I did.
> Then, as I and my students constantly met with the folks at the NFB
> Jernigan Institute, visiting the NFB headquarters in Baltimore overnight,
> interacting with students from schools for the blind, and working 
> together with blind engineers, we started to learn more about all the
> misunderstandings about blindness. One of the biggest among them is the
> ability of the blind to perform at jobs. I have learned and personally
> witnessed that, contrary to general belief, there are really very few 
> jobs that blind people cannot do well. Throughout my work on this project
> I've
> been talking and emailing back and forth with blind people from all over
> the world and was surprised at the jobs these people have. They range 
> from office managers, farmers, IT specialists to auto mechanics. Some ride
> horses as a hobby, and I even talked to a hobbyist who is a drag racer.
> Gradually I understood that with just a little technology the blind can
> really do almost anything that a sighted person can do.
> We need for the rest of society to understand this, and what better
> way to deliver this message to society than for a blind person to drive a
> car? At the same time, if this vehicle becomes a reality, which it will,
> and is available to the general public, the impact on the blind would be
> huge, opening even more doors to new jobs by providing a safe, independent
>>> means of transportation.
> What is this car for the blind? How does it work? We don't have a 
> lot of time, and the vehicle is very complicated, so I will give you a very
> quick overview of how it works. There are three parts to the system: part
> 1, perception; part 2, computation; and part 3, nonvisual user 
> interfaces.
> So in the first stage, perception, this vehicle has different kinds of
> sensors all around it, from laser range-finder sensors to cameras. The
> laser range-finder sensor shoots out a laser, and, if there is an object 
> in front of it, it bounces back, and a computer measures the time of
> flight.
> So, if you know the speed of light, which you do, then you can measure 
> the distance of objects. The laser shoots around, scans the environment,
> and
> makes a map around the vehicle. The camera system looks all around the
> vehicle by use of some very sophisticated computer vision algorithms, to
> identify and classify objects so that the vehicle knows, oh, a tree is 
> over there; a rock is over here. These are the lanes. A vehicle is to the 
> left, and it's going at such-and-such speed and direction.
> The second step is computation. This is a vast amount of data from 
> the sensors, and that sensory information is fed into the computer, and the
> computer tries to generate a world model. This is essentially a map 
> around the vehicle that the computer can understand. Now the challenge is
> the
> third stage--nonvisual user interfaces. How do we move or channel these
> ast amounts of real-time information to a person driving the vehicle
> without using vision? This is a challenge, so during the past three or 
> four years we've been working on many, many different types of nonvisual
> interfaces. I'm sure you've probably heard some about the vibrating vest,
> the AirPix device, and the glove. By the way, some of my students were
> here. They left yesterday, but they brought some of the interfaces and 
> did a demonstration. Did anybody have a chance to play with those?
> [applause]
> We also brought the vehicle that will eventually become the next 
> generation
> Blind Driver Challenge vehicle. It is a Ford hybrid Escape, very 
> exciting.
> One thing I want to point out is a more philosophical approach: what
> really is this Blind Driver Challenge vehicle? You know, we already have 
> a fully autonomous vehicle. Is the challenge just to put a blind person in
> it? Is that the Blind Driver Challenge vehicle? No. We want people 
> actually to drive the vehicle, so we have two types of interfaces. One is
> called 
> the instructional cue interface. The other is the informational cue 
> interface.
> Let me explain a little more, because this is a rather important concept.
> The instructional user interface includes the drive grip, which is like a
> glove, that has five ring motors on the knuckles and tells you how to 
> turn the steering wheel. With this device the computer makes the decision: 
> turn right, turn left, stop, go, push on the brake. So this information or
> instruction is transmitted to the driver through these interfaces. We 
> call this the "backseat driver problem." This is not really driving. You're
> driving, but you are really following orders from a computer. You can 
> call that a "Blind Driver Challenge" vehicle, but it is not our vision.
> We started from there. Now we are moving towards the information cue
> devices. The AirPix is a good example. AirPix is a small tablet-like 
> device that has holes on it and compressed air comes out and forms an image
> of 
> the map around the vehicle. You put your hand over it and feel, "Oh these
> are
> the roads. That's a tree over there; there is a moving vehicle to my
> right." The computer provides information about the vehicle so that it is
> you, the driver, who make active decisions. That is the concept.
> We started with instruction cues and are moving toward information
> cues, and the future is great, and it's looking good. Let me give you a
> brief timeline. In 2008 we started a feasibility study. We started with
> this low-cost dune buggy that we bought on eBay for $2,000. We only had
> $3,000, so we used two-thirds of it. Then we got a bunch of donations of
> equipment from companies, and then we generated these first-generation
> interfaces, which included vibrating chairs and vibrating vests, a click-
> wheel interface, and other things.
>  In 2009, last year, we had our first successful test run in early
> summer, and, as Mark Riccobono mentioned, we brought the vehicle to the
> Youth Slam event at the University of Maryland and had two hundred 
> students from all over the nation who came. Some of them had the chance to
> drive 
> it, and the experience was tremendous. When I think of it, I get tears in
> my
> eyes.
>  This year we are developing the next-generation vehicle. The red
> buggy demonstration that we had last year was really a feasibility
> experiment; it was run in a parking lot. The lanes were defined by red
> traffic cones. It was a very controlled environment, but now the next-
> generation vehicle is going to be running on real roads. This is a real
> car, and this is going to be the real Blind Driver Challenge vehicle. I 
> am very excited about this.
> 	  As you have probably heard, this has been all over the news, even
> internationally. It has been on the cover of several magazines, on TV 
> news, everywhere. I am literally getting hundreds and hundreds of emails,
> letters, and phone calls from people all over the world. Most of them are
> positive: "Dr. Hong, this is great. Thanks for doing this." Some of them
> give us advice and feedback. But from time to time this is a 
> controversial
> project, and I do get letters, most of them from sighted people, saying,
> "Dr. Hong, are you out of your mind? We already have teenagers texting
> while driving, which is dangerous. What do you think you are doing 
> putting blind people on the road?" To be honest with you, it is rather a
> valid
> concern, so this is good news, bad news, good news, bad news, but I get a
> lot of questions from the community saying, "When can I buy this vehicle.
> When can I drive the vehicle?" Well you will be able to drive the vehicle
> soon in a test track, in a controlled situation. When will you be able to
> buy it? That's the bad news. This vehicle will not be a real product for
> the general consumer until it's proven 100 percent safe, at least as safe
> as a regular vehicle today. The good news is that I truly believe it can 
> be done. [applause]
> Now again, the bad news is that, aside from these technical
> difficulties, a hurdle which we really can tackle, there are many, many
> other issues. How is a driver's license going to be issued? How is
> insurance going to cover this? The social acceptance. A lot of issues 
> need to be addressed; nonetheless, this is a very exciting project. You
> will
> actually have a chance to drive this vehicle. January 29 at the Daytona
> International Raceway, we will have the first sneak peek, public
> demonstration, and next year at the national convention we will have the
> full demonstration and it's very, very exciting.
>  When I talk to my students who work on this project, I always ask
> them, how many chances in your lifetime do you have an opportunity to
> change the world? This is actually that moment, so we are the Virginia 
> Tech Blind Driver Challenge Team, and we expect to see spectacular things 
> coming in the next few years. .
> 							  
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