The , , , and the reported that the Virtual Environments and Multimodal Interaction (VEMI) Laboratory at the 91±¬ÁÏ earned third place in a national competition and an invitation to the White House for developing an inclusive smartphone software platform that will provide navigational assistance to people with visual impairment and seniors who want to use self-driving cars for ride-sharing and hailing services. VEMI will receive $300,000 for winning the prize in the second phase of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Inclusive Design Challenge for its Autonomous Vehicle Assistant (AVA) smartphone technology. VEMI leads the group designing the AVA platform, known as the Autonomous Vehicle Research Group (AVRG), which also includes collaborators from Northeastern University and Colby College.
