[Nfbf-l] Driving Blind? We May Live to See the Day

[Sherri]

I am all for this, but as is said in the article, social acceptance will come a lot later than the car will actually be invented.

Sherri

Driving Blind? We May Live to See the Day
Tom Dunkel Contributor

(March 18) -- With public opinion divided over just how dangerous it 
is for motorists to text-message or yak on cell phones, imagine the 
debate taking a wildly unexpected turn: How would you feel about 
sharing the road with blind drivers?

The idea sounds preposterous, akin to the New York Philharmonic 
hiring a deaf conductor. But the National Federation of the Blind has 
made development of a car that's suitable for the visually impaired 
an organizational goal, and not a symbolic one.

"It's absolutely intended to be real," says Mark Riccobono, executive 
director of the federation's Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, which 
is dedicated to pushing the envelope of applied technology. "For us, 
this is exactly the same as in 1962 when [President] John F. Kennedy 
said, 'We are going to the moon.' "


The federation has partnered with students at the Virginia Tech 
College of Engineering for what's dubbed the Blind Driver Challenge. 
Riccobono, who himself is blind, drove the prototype vehicle -- a 
super-sophisticated, laser-equipped dune buggy -- last spring, 
zipping around a Virginia Tech parking lot at about 20 mph.

The next step involves taking a Ford Escape hybrid SUV and making it 
completely roadworthy. The design team is now working on systems that 
can identify individual traffic lanes and can distinguish between 
similarly shaped objects such as a tree and a stop sign. The National 
Federation of the Blind hopes to unveil this next-generation Ford 
Escape in the summer of 2011, showcasing it in a series of 
demonstration drives along the East Coast.

"The technology for a fully autonomous vehicle exists today," says 
Dennis Hong, an associate professor in Virginia Tech's department of 
engineering who is supervising the 13 students working on the 
project. The trick, however, is to put a blind driver in 
decision-making control of the car rather than merely having him or 
her obey instructions issued by an on-board computer. That degree of 
self-reliance is at least several years away.

Cultural barriers are another matter.

It likely will take blind drivers "much, much longer" to gain legal 
and social acceptance than it will take engineers to build them a 
safe car, says Virginia Tech senior Kimberly Wenger of Ponte Vedre 
Beach, Fla., the student team leader. "There are way too many 
skeptics out there."

Nearly everyone reacted with skepticism when the Federation for the 
Blind announced its driving initiative almost a decade ago. "It kind 
of sat dormant for a couple of years," Riccobono admits.

The federation then put up $3,000 in seed money and asked engineering 
schools across the country to take up the Blind Driver Challenge as a 
pro bono cause. Only students from Virginia Tech's Robotics and 
Mechanisms Laboratory answered the call.

The modified dune buggy they created utilizes a front-mounted, 
laser-range-finder sensor. It constantly feeds visual data into a 
computer that "interface" with a blind driver in two ways.

First, the driver wears a vest embedded with tiny motors that vibrate 
at different intensity levels according to how fast the car should be going.

Secondly, the computer issues audio cues every few seconds, telling 
the driver how much to turn the steering wheel and in what direction. 
Wenger admits that the robot voice can be "a little obnoxious." 
Indeed, it's like having a know-it-all back-seat driver that doesn't 
know when to shut up.

As part of the design process, some students put on blindfolds and 
took test drives. Wenger describes that as a "very scary," 
reality-bending experience. Most of them could feel the dune buggy 
surging forward from the moment they strapped themselves into the 
driver's seat. In fact, it was standing still, simply idling in neutral.

Blind drivers had their own acclamation problems. Wesley Majerus, a 
staff technology specialist at the Federation of the Blind, initially 
was "overwhelmed" by the vibrating vest and the robot voice. Once he 
got the hang of things, though, it was "liberating" to make the 
transition from lifelong passenger to ... driver. To road warrior. To 
chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, born-to-run American.


In the grand tradition of automobile innovation, the 2011 test model 
is being tweaked. The laser sensor has been upgraded. The vibrating 
vest has given way to a pair of vibrating driving gloves. The audio 
cues are history. Instead, the driver will get his bearings from a 
so-called flexible-surface "tactile map" on the dashboard. The map 
runs on compressed air and changes shape to reflect what lies on the 
road ahead. The driver reads the map with his fingertips.

According to Riccobono, the Blind Driver Challenge has gotten a 
"mixed reaction" thus far. Any fears are unfounded, he says. Nothing 
is imminent. It will take several million more dollars and several 
million more hours of brainstorming to produce the proper, 
blooper-proof vehicle. Even then, the appeal might be limited. But 
how many blind people venture onto the road isn't important. Their 
freedom to choose is.

"It wasn't getting to the moon that was significant," Riccobono says. 
"It was the path of technology development and how it got the nation 
to think about itself."

In other words, relax. This is just another small step for mankind. 
There's no need to worry about the prospect of blind people driving 
automobiles.

Well, not until they get behind the wheel and start text-messaging.
Filed under: Nation, Science, Top Stories


Sherri Brun, NFBF Secretary and Newsline® Coordinator
E-mail:  flmom2006 at gmail.com
http://www.nfbnewslineonline.org
http://www.nfbflorida.org

"Don't give up something you want forever for something you want only for now!"