Taking a ride in MIT's self-driving wheelchair

Over the past few months, CSAIL's (MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) self-driving wheelchair has become a familiar sight around the MIT halls. It's a nice little rolling advertisement for the lab's work -- and more importantly, it's a great opportunity to test the mobility device in a real world setting. As students wander by in groups, deep in conversation or face down in their smartphones, their paths are unpredictable and collisions are a very real possibility. This kind of real world testing is exactly why the chair exists in the first place. It's hard to test autonomous cars in out on the streets.