To start, here’s the Popular Science story about the Self-Driving car experience we set up for NFB 2019:
Lyft’s Braille Guides for Robocars
Another year, another full on experience attending the National Federation of the Blind conference and representing Lyft as their blind accessibility specialist. The event moved in 2019 from Orlando to Las Vegas, trading the humid heat for the dry desert heat, and took up residence in the Mandalay Bay convention center.
As it so happens, Lyft and the self-driving car company Aptiv have a partnership down in Vegas, so once the conference was announced, the wheels in my head began to spin. Self-driving cars are massively supported by the NFB and other blind groups around the world due to the mobility independence they represent for people who can not currently drive. I thought it would be an awesome idea to set up an event that showed off the Lyft and Aptiv self-driving cars, plus worked with the team to add in more immersion for blind and visually impaired riders while they were being ferried around by a super computer.
In a self-driving car ride, the driver seat is always occupied by a safety driver, and the right seat/passenger seat is occupied by a ride engineer. The cars are not allowed to be in self-driving mode when on private property such as when traversing through the property of a hotel, but once on the Strip or on public roads, the self-driving navigation can have at it. The safety driver drives the car through the private property, and then once on the road, the self-driving mode is activated with the flip of a switch, exactly the same as turning on cruise control.
The engineer in the right seat monitors the ride data, checks how the computer is functioning as it discovers and surmounts obstacles, follows traffic protocols, and generally ensures that the ride is safe while being extra eyes for the driver. when passengers are in the car, the engineer takes on the role of an educator, explaining how the self-driving car works, what it is looking out for, and answers any and all questions posed by the enthralled passengers.
Each self-driving car is outfitted with a computer display that shows off the “vision” that all of the cameras and sensors built into the car are creating to provide a clear and safe driving path for the car. This screen is usually the hilight of the engineer’s explanations of the ride, pointing to carious shapes and colors that define points of interest for the computer to use to calculate speed, distance to other cars, stationary objects, etc. Unfortunately, this screen is purely visual, so that whole explanation would get lost to blind riders.
In lieu of this, I brought up the idea of printing out tactile graphics and braille that engineers could give to blind passengers who were interested in the tech of the car. The tactile graphics would be stored in the glovebox and be available in every car that would be out and about on the Strip. The graphics would detail out a birds-eye view of the car outline, with braille markers pointing out each of the sensors and cameras on the car. The braille would explain the overall technical nature of how the sensors all work in concert to provide a safe driving experience.
I flew down to Vegas to meet up with the Aptiv and Lyft teams to plan out the overall NFB experience. Riders would be picked from a lottery from all of the NFB attendees. each of the chosen riders would be guided to a car from the mandalay Bay convention center, be given a white glove touch tour to feel all of the sensors around the car, then be taken on a self-driving ride down the Strip to the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign and come on back. After getting through the Mandalay Bay parking lot, the car would be switched into Self-Driving mode along the Strip and the car would drive all the way to the sign, negotiate lane changes and stoplights, make a yielding turn around the sign and merge into the lane that would bring them back to the hotel. It was a short experience, but each trip was bound to be different due to the random nature of the traffic along the Strip.
I took about 10 rides back and forth with the team to get a sense of the timing and what would be the most interesting things to point out in the script for blind and visually impaired passengers. The first run and every trip was equally exhilarating. The car makes a pleasant Bong noise when it switches over into Self-Driving mode, and the best way to describe it is rather anti-climactic. The AI drives the car like a little old lady; it’s very conservative and smooth. The car made several smart adjustments to account for the bad human drivers around it. We got cut off while trying to make the lane change to get to the sign turnaround, and the car negotiated it perfectly. I was amazed at the way the car could sense oncoming traffic when yielding to turn into the return lane. We ended the day with a great plan for all the riders. It was also rather silly as it was the first time I had ever been to Vegas for less than a day without doing anything particularly Vegasy. We flew in, met the team at the hotel, they gave us a tour of the cars, we talked through the experience, took the rides, then hightailed it back to the airport for our return flight to SFO.
When NFB came around a few weeks later, the experience we set up went off without a hitch! We had 50 blind and visually impaired riders try out the Aptiv cars, plus even had the youngest self-driving rider ever when a 12 year old blind kid took a ride with his dad. When they returned, as with everyone, they were super excited by the ride and the kid was asking all manner of questions regarding the sensors and how the computer ran the car. BLind people really love this technology and the enthusiasm they had for the technology was readily apparent and the Lyft and Aptiv teams loved discussing as much as they could with all of the passengers. The passengers would finish up the experience by coming over to the table where I was sitting where I’d ask about the ride and hand out copies of the tactile graphics and braille information sheets from the cars along with a T-Map from the Lighthouse for the BLind that showed the overall route the car took through Las Vegas.
The event was wonderful and could not have gone better. I’m really happy that we were able to offer this experience to folks at the convention, and throughout the week I was getting a lot of buzz and interest in how others could try the cars out for themselves. The self-driving cars for Lyft are only going from hotel to hotel in Vegas, so you can only order them from the hotel rideshare pickup areas, though that area would change depending on which hotel you were at, and the destination would need to be another hotel or point of interest on the Strip that allowed rideshare vehicles to drop people off.
Amy and I took rides from the Mandalay Bay to the Cosmopolitan for tasty food at the Wicked Spoon, and had a great time talking about the tech and the event with the Aptiv drivers and engineers with each of the rides. Absolutely looking forwards to self-driving cars being adopted farther and wider in the future, to the extent where I would be able to own one myself so my wife can get a break from all the driving.