A release from the National Federation for the Blind reports a blind person driving and avoiding obstacles on the Daytona speedway. They used a car from the TORC team at Virginia Tech, one of the competitors in the Darpa Grand Challenges. In effect, the blind driver replaced the "drive by wire" component of a robocar with a more intelligent and thinking human also able to feel acceleration and make some judgements. As the laser and other sensors in the car detected obstacles and turns, the computer sent audio and vibratory signals to the driver to turn, speed up or slow down.

While this demo is pretty simple, it was part of a larger project the NFB has to encourage computer and robotic technologies to let the blind do what the sighted can do. In my robocar roadmap I outlined a number of bodies who might promote and lobby for robocar technology, in particular the blind, so it's good to see that step underway. They did it as well in 2009 with a simpler dune buggy.

This car did not use the fancy and expensive 64 line Velodyne LIDAR sensor that has become the norm on most other working robocars. The Virginia Tech team (Victor Tango) was the only one of the 6 teams to complete the urban challenge not to use that LIDAR. The car shown isn't nearly as decorated with sensors as Victor Tango was, at least from looking at it visually, indicating good improvements in their system.