Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin





Jonathan Gitlin

WASHINGTON—We've been for rides in quite a few autonomous cars of late, but today was something a little more special. Today, we went for a ride in Project SAM—short for Semi Autonomous Motorcar.

It all started back in 2000, when a promising racing career was cut short as a pre-season crash left Sam Schmidt paralyzed from the neck down. In the decade-plus since, Schmidt has gotten on with his life, and he now runs a successful IndyCar team. But as a quadriplegic, he's been dependent on others for many things you or I take for granted—except driving, that is.

Project SAM is the initiative that's given Schmidt the ability to get behind the wheel again. The car is a collaboration with Arrow Electronics, the title sponsor for Schmidt's IndyCar team. And with Schmidt and Project SAM in town to demo the technology at the Paralyzed Veterans of America annual summit, he was kind enough to take me for a quick drive ahead of the main event.

We covered the technology behind Project SAM in some depth last year, but here's a quick recap: the car in question is a Chevrolet Corvette Z06, a 650hp sports car that's honestly more at home on track than on the street. Schmidt steers the car using head movements, picked up by an array of infrared cameras that track a bunch of white dots on a pair of sunglasses.

To make it stop or go, he sips or puffs on a small tube connected to a pressure sensor. And a series of voice commands activate things like turn signals. In the passenger seat, there's a second steering wheel (a Fanatec one, no less) and a secondary mechanical control for the accelerator and brake in case of technical problem while Schmidt is driving.

Not that there was any call to use them on our 10-minute ride around the capitol. In fact, you would have been hard pressed to know that anything unusual was happening with this vehicle. There were a few hard instances of braking—again, Project SAM is more at home on track–but save for some fine tuning the system seems to work extremely well in regular city traffic.

"It gives me a huge sense of normalcy," Schmidt explained. "For the first time in 17 years, I feel normal, just driving."

Of course, "just driving" sells his achievement a little short. Schmidt has lapped the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at speed with Project Sam. And at last year's Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado, he (along with co-driver Robby Unser) did a demonstration run up the mountain that proved he's still got that racer's instinct.

"Pikes Peak required trust and commitment," Schmidt told me after our drive. Although bad weather ended their run at the midpoint, Schmidt and Unser completed several test runs earlier that June. The race organizers probably weren't expecting him to attack the course quite as vigorously as he did, given the course winds its way up the side of the mountain with plenty of corners and very few guard rails. It was an experience that Unser told us left him "with wet socks" when we spoke with him last year in Colorado.

Schmidt said it's been fairly easy to adapt to driving via head movements and the sup-and-puff tube. "The hardest thing was retraining myself not to continually check the rear view mirror," he explained. Since the steering is controlled by head tracking, that would obviously cause the car to veer. (There is a relocated mirror and blind-spot monitors that are all within his field of view.)

He also told he was more comfortable driving Project SAM on a closed course, since he didn't have to worry about things like two-way traffic. We imagine the lack of speed limits on track is also somewhat of a draw—he is a racing driver, after all.

Listing image by Jonathan Gitlin