Images from a historic day for the blind at Daytona

Scenes from today’s successful run of the Blind Driver Challenge car at the Daytona International Motorspeeday, part of the Rolex24 Race. There, Mark Riccobono, of the National Federation of the Blind, drove the track in a modified 2010 Ford Escape Hybrid SUV. The vehicle uses a variety of non-visual interfaces to assist the driver in the tasks of driving – steering, braking, accelerating and the like. After the demo, Riccobono said starting today, "being a blind driver is no longer an insult."

In the following photos:

A blind child uses his hands to feel one of the cars, modified by students at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering and engineers at TORC Technologies, a company based in Blacksburg.

(Left to right) Virginia Tech College of Engineering doctoral student Paul D’Angio and masters student Ryan Colby, both in mechanical engineering, talk to Virginia Tech associate professor Dennis Hong. The trio, along with a score of other graduate and undergraduate students at the university, spent months preparing for Saturday’s event in Daytona.

Laura Strickland, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering, explains the non-visual interfaces of the Blind Driver Challenge car to members of the National Federation of the Blind. It should be noted that not all members of NFB at the event are blind, many are family or friends of the blind.

Photos by Steven D. A. Mackay

Success at Daytona

A bit more than two hours ago Mark Riccobono made history by taking the wheel of the Blind Driver Challenge car and running the course at Daytona International Speedway. Mark said the feeling was one of the most exhilarating of his life. The director of the National Federation of the Blind’s Jernigan Institute said he appreciated more the chance to drive his family – wife and two children – around a parking lot. Paul D’angio, a doctoral at Virginia Tech, said today’s work capped 8 months of hard work, through rain, heat, snow and darkness. More to come tonight….

Photo by Steven D. A. Mackay

Taking the track ... today

The day before the race, the Blind Driver Challenge cars arrived at the garages of the Daytona International Motorspeedway. Earlier in the day, Mark Riccobono test drove the non-visual interface car in a nearby parking lot, with the buzz and roar of the racetrack in the background.

Later that night, at a hotel along Dayton’s world famous beach, the National Federation of the Blind hosted a rally to celebrate this great technological achievement. Among the speakers was NFB President Marc Maurer. His great words: “This is not the end … This is just the beginning!” Dennis Hong, Virginia Tech associate professor of mechanical engineering, also spoke. He celebrated the efforts of his undergraduate and graduate students at the College of Engineering. “We always deliver.”

And, now, two hours before the race, all are excited. At the racetrack, stands are filling up, the BDC cars are being prepped and Riccobono is ready to take the wheel. To listen to an audiocast of the race go here: http://nfbrolex24.serverroom.us:5144/index.html

And with that, we’re taking the track…

One day to until the big debut at Daytona...

The Blind Driver Challenge team practices tomorrow for the debut of the Blind Driver Challenge vehicle just outside the Daytona International Speedway. Behind the wheel is Marc Riccobono, who will drive the car tomorrow on the track before thousands of race fans.

He is executive director of the National Federation of the Blind’s Jernigan Institute, which launched the idea of a vehicle that the blind one day could drive. Behind Mark is Laura Strickland, a Virginia Tech junior majoring in mechanical engineering and a member of the Blind Driver Challenge student team.

Blind Driver Challenge vehicles take the track

The Blind Driver Challenge team is at the Daytona Motorspeedway, practicing for this weekend's debut at the Rolex24 race. Dennis Hong, associate professor at Virginia Tech and faculty adviser on the project, had his iPhone handy for the practice session. Check out this photo album to see all the images.

Sneak Peak: Daytona International Speedway

The Blind Driver Challenge vehicles at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona, Fla. Image courtesy Dennis Hong.

Photo blog: 18 January 2011 at VIR

From Jan. 17-19, 2011, the Blind Driver Challenge team -- including members of the National Federation of the Blind, the Virginia Tech College of Engineering and TORC Technologies -- visited the Virginia International Raceway in rural Danville, Va., to test the non-visual interfaces of the second-generation Blind Driver Challenge cars. Check out this photo album from the second day of testing.

Images by Steven Mackay

From the archives: 'Washington Post' covers Blind Driver Challenge

As we draw closer to the Rolex24 public demo of the second-generation Blind Driver Challenge vehicle at the Daytona Motor Speedway, let's take a quick look back at the highlights of this great journey, a Race for Independence. The date: July 31, 2009. The place: The University of Maryland campus, College Park, Md. The event: More than a dozen youth and several adult counselors participating in the National Federation of the Blind's 2009 Youth Slam Camp became among the first to drive the Blind Driver Challenge car.

Among the media that came to see this historic, uplifting event was "The Washington Post." Here is their report on the day's events, including a text story, photo slide show and a video, featuring Anil Lewis' now famous "Blind man driving!" shout of joy.

Image: A youth participant in the NFB's summer camp takes the wheel. In the passenger seat is Greg Jannaman, a then-Virginia Tech senior who led the Blind Driver Challenge student team. He since has graduated.

Blind Driver Challenge at Daytona's Rolex24

The second-generation Blind Driver Challenge vehicle is now at the world-famous Daytona International Speedway, just days away from its public demonstration at the Rolex 24 Race. There, thousands of race fans will watch as a blind person takes the wheel of this modified 2010 Ford Escape Hybrid SUV drive the in-field track. Also expected to be cheering in the stands: Hundreds of blind people who are part of the nonprofit Federation.

“This historic demonstration of a blind person independently driving an automobile will be a tremendous exhibition of the capacity of a blind person using innovative non-visual access technology to perform a task most people thought impossible for a blind person,” said Anil Lewis, director of strategic communications for the National Federation of the Blind. “The foundation of many misperceptions about blind people and blindness will be shaken.”

The Blind Deriver Challenge is part of a history making initiative – pitched by the Federation, and accepted by the Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory -- that one day could allow blind people to drive an automobile. Partnering with the Federation and Virginia Tech is TORC Technologies, based in Blacksburg, Va.

The Rolex24event is a 24-hour endurance race for sports cars. The 49th running of the event is set for Jan. 29-30, 2011, at Daytona and will be accompanied by 24 hours of other events. The Blind Driver Challenge is scheduled to take the track at 11:30 a.m. (Eastern) Jan. 29. (Neither car will take the oval track.) The official Rolex 24 race starts at 3:30 p.m. Saturday and runs until 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

Added Dennis Hong, a Virginia Tech associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of RoMeLa: “As we stand on the race track of the Daytona International Speedway, the sheer scale of it takes our breath away. Imagining the tens of thousands of spectators cheering and watching the world's first public demo of our hard work makes my heart pound. ‘How many times in your life time do you think you have an opportunity to change the world?’ I ask my students. Developing technology to help the society, we are indeed changing the world right here, right now...”

Follow this blog, or join us on twitter for updates as the public demo nears. http://twitter.com/VTEngineering.

Image: One of the Blind Driver Challenge vehicles at the Virginia International Raceway in Danville, Va., on January 18, 2011. Photo by Steven Mackay

Blind Driver Challenge vehicles: A roster

Thus far, four vehicles have been directly used as part of the National Federation of the Blind's Blind Driver Challenge. Each vehicle was modified with non-visual interfaces, which have been update, replaced or placed on hold as each new prototype was introduced. Work has been led by Dennis Hong, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech and director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, and his team of graduate and undergraduate engineering students since 2006. This past year, TORC Technologies joined the Challenge.

An overview of each vehicle:

DAVID: Demonstrative Automobile for the Visually Impaired Driver. The $2,000 modified red dune buggy that started it all. This is the vehicle debuted at the 2009 NFB Youth Slam and was a hit hundreds of media outlets around the world – most significantly garnering a front page story with “The Washington Post” and a spot on CBS’ “The Early Show.” Status: Now on display at the national headquarters of the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, Maryland.

VIVIAN: Visually Impaired Vehicle Interfaces for Advanced Navigation. This golf cart was used to test different configurations of the sensors and non-visual interfaces. Status: A temporary-use vehicle, it is no longer part of the Blind Driver Challenge project.

BRIAN: Blind Research Interfaces for Advanced Navigation. A black 2010 Ford Hybrid Escape, part of the official second generation BDC vehicle team which we will be publicly debut at the Rolex24 on January 29, 2011, at Daytona International Speedway.

ANDREA: Automobile for Non-visual Driving Research, Education and Advancement
This charcoal 2010 Ford Hybrid Escape is exactly identical as BRIAN except in color. It also will be publicly debut at the Rolex24 on January 29, 2011, at Daytona International Speedway.

Images by Steven D. A. Mackay and John McCormick/Virginia Tech.

Blind Driver Challenge: The who, what, where, when and why

The National Federation of the Blind’s Blind Driver Challenge is one of the most innovative and far-reaching research initiatives of the nonprofit’s research center, the Jernigan Institute. It is an initiative to develop non-visual interface technology that conveys real-time information about a driving environment so that it will be possible for a blind person to one day safely and independently operate a car. 

As NFB and its project partners -- the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech and TORC Technologies -- work to ensure that a blind person can access the information necessary to confidently press the accelerator of an automobile, the team also is accelerating development of other nonvisual access technologies that will ensure that blind people will remain independent and competitive.

This ground-breaking research initiative of our NFB Jernigan Institute challenges universities, technology developers, and other interested innovators to establish NFB Blind Driver Challenge teams, in collaboration with the NFB, to build interface technologies that will empower blind people to drive a car independently.

The “Challenge” is not the development of an autonomous car that drives a blind person around, but to develop a non-visual interface for a car that can convey real-time information about driving conditions to the blind so that we can use our own capacity to think and react to interpret these data and maneuver a car safely.

Image: Wesley Majerus finishes driving the first prototype Virginia Tech Blind Driver Challenge vehicle on a campus driving course in May 2009. In the passenger seat is Greg Jannaman, who led the student design team during its public debut year. Photo by Steven Mackay

History of the Blind Driver Challenge

The Blind Driver Challenge was first formally issued at the opening of the National Federation of the Blind's Jernigan Institute in January 2004. However, Marc Maurer, president of the NFB, previously discussed years earlier the development of a highway-ready vehicle that can be driven by the blind. While people have speculated for decades about autonomous vehicles, the NFB Blind Driver Challenge presented a paradigm shift.

The NFB Jernigan Institute -- the only research and training center developed and directed by the blind themselves -- now provides the vehicle for technological innovation that will empower the blind to drive. At the 2004 opening of the Jernigan Institute, a mock-up of a vehicle drivable by the blind was on display. Note: Not a vehicle that drives the blind, but a vehicle with an innovative interface and feedback system that allows a blind person to make their own driving decisions. Independent.

Since the launch of the NFB Blind Driver Challenge in 2004, the NFB has been working to capture imaginations and create a perceptual shift from autonomous vehicles to vehicles drivable by the blind. The NFB has undertaken efforts to engage universities in the challenge.

As of fall 2009, Virginia Tech is the only institution to take on the NFB Blind Driver Challenge. Virginia Tech’s work during the 2008-09 school year and programming offered the first prototype Blind Driver vehicle at the 2009 NFB Youth Slam has created new energy around the initiative. The vehicle was a hit – garnering a front page story with “The Washington Post” and a spot on CBS’ “The Early Show.”

For a more detailed history of the Blind Driver Challenge, please read Mark Riccobono’s article, Driving Independence and Innovation Through Imagination, which appeared in the December 2009 issue of the Braille Monitor.

Text by National Federation of the Blind. Photo by Steven Mackay/Virginia Tech