The long term objective is to create a safe, reliable and cost effective vehicle control technology that can be used by the physically impaired to provide for their transportation needs and increased autonomy. The specific aim is to demonstrate that commercially available technology can be designed into an innovative redundancy technique (called "Data-Mediated Redundancy") to produce a cost effective, highly reliable and-fail safe method of controlling common vehicle driving functions. To achieve the Phase l goals, a bench top system will be designed and developed (including software) to demonstrate the concept of "Data-Mediated Redundancy" with a singly redundant system. The system will then be tested to demonstrate the system's ability to continue normal operation despite the initiation of several different failure modes. The results will lead to the ability to produce cost-effective vehicle control systems (both in terms of initial investment and ongoing maintenance costs) that can provide increased freedom and autonomy for the physically impaired.Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research: The results will lead to the ability to produce cost-effective vehicle control systems for the physically impaired in the near term and eventually for commercial, industrial, agricultural and mining vehicles and equipment.National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
