Helping Blind Drivers Take the Wheel
August 5, 2009
Steven Mackay/Virginia Tech University Wesley Majerus finishes driving the Virginia Tech Blind Driver Challenge vehicle on a campus driving course. In the passenger seat is Greg Jannaman, who led the student design team.
Undergraduate students at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering have entered relatively uncharted territory in the automobile world. They have created a vehicle that enables the visually impaired to drive unassisted.
Virginia Tech began work on the project in 2004. The college was the only research institution to accept the challenge and grant offered by the Jernigan Institute, a subsidiary of the National Federation of the Blind, to design a car that the blind can drive without assistance from another person.
"We accepted because we saw the potential impact of all the spin-off technologies that can come out of this project — both for the blind and the sighted, both for driving and nondriving applications," said Prof. Dennis Hong, director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory of the mechanical engineering department at Virginia Tech.
The bare-bones vehicle, which resembles a big go-kart or a quad in size and design, was tested at the Blind Driver Challenge event on a course at the Virginia Tech campus this summer. Last week, the car was available for testing on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland, as the federation held its biennial Youth Slam, a program designed to expose blind adolescents to careers that they might otherwise consider closed off from.
Steven Mackay/Virginia Tech University Patrick Johnson, a legally blind graduate student at Virginia Tech, test drives the university's Blind Driver Challenge vehicle on a campus parking lot with Mr. Jannaman.
The car is Virginia Tech College of Engineering's latest and most successful version. It makes use of laser range finders and an instant voice command interface that guides the driver. According to Greg Jannaman, the 2008-9 team leader of the Blind Driver Challenge project, the car's technology focuses on three areas: speed, emergency stops and steering.
Vibrational motors in the seat straps on both sides of the driver indicate how fast the car is moving. As the driver increases the speed, the vibrations become more and more intense. When the driver has reached a speed considered unsafe, the vibrations are the most violent and the vehicle will stop. As for turning the car, the steering wheel sends audible clicks to the driver through headphones. The car then tells the driver how many clicks to move the wheel to make a turn.
"Night, fog, low visibility have no impact," Professor Hong said. "As a matter of fact, the laser can see better in these conditions than a human eye. It is limited by the fact that the driver needs to concentrate on these new interface signals, but then again, sighted people also need to pay attention to the road."
The vehicle still requires further research and a lot more testing. According to Professor Hong, the next step includes creating an electric car (for environmental reasons) and fine-tuning the technology, as well as reducing the vehicle's cost.
When asked how long he believed it will take to develop a car that can put the sight impaired on the road with everyone else, Professor Hong said, "I can't speculate, but I know that the technology will be ready before the society will be ready."
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