“Through the Inclusive Design Challenge, the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) seeks innovative, inclusive design features to enable people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities to use automated vehicles, particularly ADS-dedicated vehicles (ADS-DV) that are operated exclusively at Levels 4 and 5.” – Challenge.gov Click to learn more about the Inclusive Design Challenge.
It’s been extremely busy in April, May, and June putting the final touches on our Inclusive Design Challenge submission. In early May, we submitted our write-up and demo video. A lot of work went into making sure we answered all the questions posed in the write-up guidelines, and we had a great time filming our demo. During the Inclusive Design Challenge, we created a full, working prototype that covered all our proposed technology. We also created a working Autonomous Vehicle simulator to truly demonstrate that we had a fully operational system and app versus just an app that moved from page to page.
After our submission, we prepared for our live demo. We had additional technology we wanted to add to our system before we presented live to a large group of people. We added some great features, and with a week left before our live demo, we decided it was time to put a new face on our FAVI app. We designed our app to be fully functional with the interface being easily changeable to meet the needs of any market or group of users. Our design efforts were confirmed as we were able to get a completely new look on our app in just a few days.
Now we are awaiting the results of the challenge.
Since our live demo, we are still working and living by our motto of “Always Forward”. Last week Chris spent an hour as the main guest on an accessibility podcast by Accessible Avenue (accessibleavenue.net) answering all kinds of questions about Autonomous Vehicle accessibility and questions about the Inclusive design challenge. It was a great time with some great questions and really showed the huge interest from the visually impaired community in AV. We’ll post a link when it’s available.
Tomorrow Chris will be interviewed by the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Newsletter about the Inclusive Design Challenge, and what we are doing to make AV accessible.
We look forward to the coming age of Autonomous Vehicles and especially how they are going to be life changing for those with disabilities. More to come…
This is a very busy week at FAR. A combination of creating our write-up for our Inclusive Design Challenge deadline of May 1st is well underway, and at the same time we are working on videos demonstrating the incredible technology we have created over the past year or so. The question is how does one go about demonstrating a technology that in production will interface with an Automated Vehicle when you do not have an AV to test on? The answer is simple but a lot of work. You create an AV Simulator! If all goes as planned, our AV simulator will take commands from our FAVI system and simulate a drive (with a real driver following the simulator commands). The simulator will take commands from the User’s FAVI app and respond appropriately. The goal will be to demonstrate requesting your vehicle, successfully locating the vehicle, driving the route to the drop-off point, and then successfully finding the entrance to the destination location. It’s one thing to talk about what a technology can do, but the truth is that it’s always more helpful to see it in action. It’s a lot of work to put a good demonstration together, but we are hopeful we’ll get there and really show the value of what we have created.
Automated Vehicle Simulator
This week also began the deployment of our bluetooth technology at the Minster School in Nottinghamshire, UK. We are very excited to bring greater independence to their visually impaired students.
FAR Indoor Beacons
Finally, this week we also began the deployment of beacons on the bus system in Pensacola, Florida. These beacons will ride on each of their buses as well as being mounted on their bus stops. This deployment will help the visually impaired and those that have difficulties navigating more easily locate their bus stops and give them the ability to always know where their bus is on their route even if they miss the announcements. We see a future of switching from bluetooth to UWB beacons for our transportation systems to give even more accuracy and independence to our users.
FAR Bus Stop Beacons
We love busy weeks and making an impact to improve the lives of people. We look forward to continuing to develop and create before our final Inclusive Design Challenge presentations in June.
FAR is neck deep in Phase II of the Inclusive Design Challenge!
Next week, January 26 at 3PM Eastern, FAR will be presenting our phase II updates to the Department of Transportation and Inclusive Design Challenge team alongside other semi-finalists.
FAR’s 10-minute presentation on Day 2 will be led by Tanner Gers, Foresight Augmented Reality’s Director of Business Development, where he will walk through FAR’s exciting developments, how FAR’s autonomous vehicle accessibility solution works, and share a video of a totally blind person using it to find a vehicle!
Join us live to learn more. Five teams will present in each session; advanced registration is required.
Day 1 (register)
Monday, January 24, 2022
11:30AM to 1:00PM Eastern
FAR’s presentation is here on Day 2 (register)
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
1:30PM to 3:00PM Eastern
As mentioned previously, one of the takeaways from our focus groups with the visually impaired was the need for standardized, accessible pickup/drop-off points for Automated Vehicles. The DOT Inclusive Design Challenge semi-finalist position has allowed us to explore that by sponsoring a group of Industrial Design/Mechanical Engineering seniors at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). These students have done a spectacular job, and yesterday at the CAPSTONE presentation they took FIRST PLACE in the Industrial Design category. We are incredibly proud of these amazing students, and they have taken our technology and envisioned new and standardized ways it can be used to help those with disabilities when using Automated Vehicles. More details will be coming as they finalize their report. To learn more: GT FARDOT Project
If you have questions about Foresight Augmented Reality or our participation in the Department of Transportation's Inclusive Design Challenge, please email us at contact@foresightar.com. We look forward to speaking with you!
