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Bringing you Cars that can See, hear and sense for you
JamiAs stated by one of its founders, Dennis Hong, "a blind person driving a vehicle safely and independently was thought to be and impossible task." Hong explained how the idea of building a car for the blind evolved to reach what it is today. The creators wanted to build a vehicle that would transport any blind person safely and independently from one place to the other. The sense of liberation that person would feel afterwards is indescribable. Not having to depend on someone 24/7 was the focal point of the creators of this vehicle.
What is the DARPA challenge?
In 2007, there was a project called the DARPA Urban Challenge that came out with a brilliant creation; a robotic vehicle that can drive itself. The vehicle was self-controlled, the driver had to press start at first and then the vehicle would reach its destination without any participation from the driver. In this challenge, a team of specialists was able to create the first autonomous vehicle. The vehicle was a success and had proven to be worthy of all the attention.
After this project, the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) dared the committee that came up with this project to modify the car and come up with one that lets a blind person "drive safely and independently." However, one of NFB's demands was that the vehicle would not be an autonomous one; they wanted the car to enable the blind person to actually be in charge of the driving task. Accordingly, by 2009, Dennis Hong and his team proved worthy of the challenge and owned up to it by creating the first car that allowed blind persons to drive without assistance.
At first, there was a prototype for the vehicle in 2009 and dozens of blind people were invited from all over the country to test this prototype and take it for a drive. According to Dennis Hong and his team, the vehicle was a success. However its problem was that it was designed to be used in a controlled environment; it was going to be hard to take such a vehicle out to the real world with lots of unexpected surprises awaiting the drivers on the road. So they took another step forward and modified the car and developed it into a real car that fits the needs of a visually impaired driver on the road in a normal environment.