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Prototype Vehicle For the Blind
An anonymous reader writes "A student team from Virginia Tech Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory have created a vehicle which allows the blind to drive. The vehicle uses a laser range finder to determine distances and alerts the driver through voice commands and vibration. Tomorrow [Friday] morning, the vehicle will have its first public test drive at the University of Maryland. At last, Braille on drive-up ATMs may finally be vindicated."
I hope they never allow these things on public roads with blind drivers. Handicapped accesibility is good and all but we shouldn't risk handicapping more people for it. Seriously, the driving is dangerous enough with a bunch of idiots who can see just fine.
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For some reason, as someone who gets around almost entirely by bicycle, this seems like an incredibly bad idea to me.
I think that'd be the easy part. A camera with Image processing for lane alignment and the same image every time. The lane alignment was actually my senior thesis--in 1993. It was just software, and I only tested it with one test set, so I have no idea how reliable it would have been. It was nowhere near real time either. I had no access to digital video. I had to rely on one test set, and I have no idea how they got the digitized frames. I imagine the reliability of the image processing has advanced; but I know the cost of digital capture devices has certainly come way down.
At present, I tend to share the "what could possibly go wrong" sentiment; but at some point in the future we may find automated systems to be more reliable than humans. Before we put it on cars though, we should get it working on trains. In theory, that's an easier problem; but we still have problems with automated trains.
I don't have data to back it up; but it seems like more train accidents are happening in manual mode now. In particular, an Amtrak accident last year (operator texting) and a recent San Francisco muni crash (operator had put train in manual). The last time I recall hearing about a train accident in automatic was on DC's metro system. It was during a snowstorm. IIRC, The operator was attempting to put the train in manual, but the system wouldn't allow it.. It was out of service, and the operator was the only fatality. That was in 1996 though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I really do not understand the point. If one can make a feedback system capable of effectively and intelligently guiding a blind person it wouldn't be necessary... Just make the car capable of driving itself. A sighted person has a hard enough time interpreting and reacting to evolving situations around them. Responding to vibrations and voice alerts is most certainly slower.
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