Blind or visually-impaired people can achieve many things in life that the rest of us would have thought impossible generations ago. It’s entirely possible that blind or visually-impaired people can live normal fulfilling lives full of endeavors and efforts many of us without disabilities would balk at. But is driving the final frontier which is impossible to break through? Will blind drivers ever make it on to the road?

The natural reaction when faced with the idea of blind drivers is one of disbelief and astonishment. I mean, it isn’t the first activity you’d imagine a blind person partaking in, or even wanting to. But it seems many blind people want to be able to drive just like the rest of us. And it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that they could indeed do so.

In 2004, the National Federation of the Blind set a challenge to all-comers to see which U.S. university could build a vehicle that allows blind people to drive with as much freedom as those of us blessed with good eyesight. Sadly, only Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering took up the challenge. After five years of working on the problem, a group of blind students tested the results on Friday.

According to The Seattle Times, the design team at Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory first turned to Virginia Tech’s entry in the 2007 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenge to build an autonomous vehicle capable of traversing bumpy terrain. But that approach was abandoned when the research team realized a blind person should be able to actually drive the vehicle for themselves rather than be driven by the vehicle.

The result was a specially-altered all-terrain vehicle. The car has a laser positioned on the front which sweeps the ground ahead and sends information about the terrain and obstacles approaching back to a computer. The computer then talks to the driver, telling them which way to steer and by how many increments. The spoken number of clicks translates to the clicks the steering wheel makes when turned.

The vehicle has a top speed of just 15 mph with speed translated to the driver by use of a vibrating vest. The blind drivers testing the system on Friday all made it around the course without hitting any obstacles. They actually performed better than the blindfolded engineers who tended to ignore the computer’s advice in favor of feel.

This is obviously just the start, and even the VA Tech engineers admit the first iteration of the vehicle is basic. But with lots more work and a higher budget to work with, it’s clear that allowing blind people to drive isn’t impossible. Which is a truly amazing, if slightly scary, thought.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 am under Auto, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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