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Va. Tech team tests vehicle for blind drivers
BLACKSBURG, Jul 15, 2009 (The News & Advance - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
A student team in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering is testing a vehicle aimed at giving the blind an opportunity to drive.
A retrofitted four-wheel dirt buggy developed by the Blind Driver Challenge team from Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory uses laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and other methods to guide blind drivers as they steer, brake and accelerate.
The vehicle remains in the early testing stage but has already earned the praise of the National Federation of the Blind, which calls it a major breakthrough for independent living of the visually impaired.
"It was great!" said Wes Majerus, of Baltimore, the first blind person to drive the buggy on a closed course at the Virginia Tech campus earlier this summer. Majerus is an access technology specialist with the National Federation of the Blind's Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, a research and training institute dedicated to developing technologies and services to help the blind achieve independence.
Majerus called his drive a liberating experience, adding that he drove before on Nebraska farm roads with his father as a guide in the passenger seat.
Sitting inside the vehicle, a blind driver can turn the steering wheel, stop and accelerate by following data from a computing unit that uses sensory information from the laser range finder serving as the "eyes" of the driver, in addition to a combination of voice commands and a vibrating vest as guides. A member of the Virginia Tech student team sat next to Majerus in the passenger seat to monitor the system's software operations.
"It's a great first step," Majerus added. "As far as the differences between human instructions and those given by the voice in the Blind Driver Challenge car, the car's instructions are very precise. You use the technology to act on the environment--the driving course--in a very orderly manner. In some cases, the human passenger will be vague, "turn left"--does that mean just a small turn to the left, or are we going for large amounts of turn?"
Also driving the vehicle was Mark Riccobono, also of Baltimore, the executive director of the Jernigan Institute, who also is blind. He called his test drive historic.
"This is sort of our going-to-the-moon project," he said.
Jernigan Institute in 2004 challenged university research teams to develop a vehicle that would one day allow the blind to drive. Virginia Tech was the only university to accept the nonprofit's call two years later, said Dennis Hong, director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, part of the Virginia Tech mechanical engineering department. The National Federation of the Blind provided a $3,000 grant to launch the project.
"I thought it would be a very rewarding project, helping the blind," said Hong, the current faculty adviser on the project. "We are not only excited about the vehicle itself, but more than that, we are excited about the potential of the many spin-off technologies from this project that can be used for helping the blind in so many ways."
The team will bring the Blind Driver Challenge vehicle to the National Federation of the Blind's Youth Slam summer camp event held July 26 through Aug. 1 in College Park, Md. There, the team hopes to have teenagers who would be obtaining their driver's licenses, but cannot because of their blindness, drive the buggy.
Even once the technology is perfected, laws now barring the blind from driving and public perception must be changed, Riccobono said.
"This is the piece that we know will be the most difficult," said Riccobono, adding that the car must be near-perfected before the National Federation of the Blind can truly push the car to lawmakers and the public.
Virginia Tech is planning major changes to the technology, including replacing the dirt buggy vehicle with a fully electric car commonly used by traffic officers in downtown city centers. The all-electric vehicle would reduce the vibration which can cause problems to the laser sensor, and it will provide clean electric power for the computing units.
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