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NASA, Nissan form self-drive vehicle partnership
Autonomous vehicles to hit the ground running with collaborative efforts involving expertise in space and on terra firmaNASA and Nissan will reference planetary rovers during a joint five-year partnership that will see the development of autonomous vehicles for introduction to the consumer market as early as next year.
But the first self-driving vehicles from the joint programme won't be fully autonomous passenger cars able to navigate reliably and safely in all circumstances; these won't come until 2020 as the partnership finalises development of vehicles able to navigate in "nearly all" situations, including city driving.
The programme will begin with the testing of a fleet of zero-emissions autonomous proof-of-concept vehicles suitable for the transport of materials, goods, payloads and people. The first vehicle is expected to be testing at NASA's Ames research centre at Moffett Field, California, by the end of 2015.
Using hardware and software used in road and space applications, researchers from NASA and Nissan's Silicon Valley research centre will work on the development of autonomous drive systems, human-machine interface solutions, network-enabled applications, and software analysis and verification.
While Nissan will be drawing on NASA's experience with Mars rover vehicles, robots on board the International Space Station and next-generation air traffic management systems in the development of autonomous vehicles, it will contribute its own knowledge in terms of component technologies, as well as prototype systems and robotic software test beds.
According to Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Nissan Motor Co, "The work of NASA and Nissan – with one directed to space and the other directed to earth, is connected by similar challenges."
NASA's Ames Research Center director, S. Pete Worden, said "All of our potential topics of research collaboration with Nissan are areas in which Ames has strongly contributed to major NASA programs. We look forward to applying knowledge developed during this partnership toward future space and aeronautics endeavours"
Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn continued: "The partnership will accelerate Nissan's development of safe, secure and reliable autonomous drive technology that we will progressively introduce to consumers beginning in 2016 up to 2020."
German car-makers Mercedes-Benz and Audi are also using US resources in respective autonomous vehicle programmes, with Mercedes recently unveiling its FO15 design concept at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show and Audi demonstrating an autonomous A7 Sportback on a 900km drive from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas.
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Written byCarsales Staff
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