A Ford Escape poking along at 25 mph isn’t usually the most exciting event on the track at the Daytona International Speedway. Consider that the is blind, however, and that slow-moving Ford is an example of how technology can grant autonomy.

Mark Riccobono, a blind executive at the National Federation of the Blind, handled the curves, avoided obstacles thrown in his path from a van ahead of him and then passed that van. He did it in a vehicle built by students using off-the-shelf technology.

“That was fun because nobody expected that we’d do that,” Riccobono said. “We kept exactly what we were g...

BARCELONA, Spain — Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play is the phone we have wanted ever since Sony’s PSP was invented. It is, in any meaningful way, the first official PSP phone, and we got to play with it at the Mobile World Congress. How does it do?

Pretty well. With the gamepad tucked out of the way, the Play is a fairly humdrum Android phone, running 2.3 Gingerbread on a Snapdragon processor and equipped with a 5-MP camera. As a phone, it is perfectly fine.

But slide that pad out, and things get fun, fast. You get a D-pad, the four familiar PlayStation “shape” buttons, start and select buttons, and ...