Nissan and NASA have struck a five-year research and development partnership to advance self-driving vehicle systems and prepare for the commercial application of the technology.
A collaboration between the carmaker and the space agency may come as a surprise, but it makes sense to involve NASA in efforts that require remote controlling a vehicle. An autonomous vehicle must allow users to monitor, guide, and remotely control the vehicle if necessary, and NASA has extensive experience in this area. The space agency has been remotely controlling vehicles for years, even on another planet, and its expertise should be greatly beneficial to this endeavor.
Nissan and NASA aim to exchange technology and ideas to develop autonomous vehicle systems, and this partnership should help both organizations. Nissan is expected to show the first results of this new collaboration before the end of the year.
Researchers from both Nissan and NASA will be testing a fleet of zero-emission self-driving cars at Ames Research Center in order to demonstrate proof-of-concept remote operation of autonomous vehicles for the transportation of goods, materials, payloads, and people. The first vehicle of this fleet should undergo testing at the facility by the end of 2015.
"The work of NASA and Nissan - with one directed to space and the other directed to earth, is connected by similar challenges," Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Nissan Motor Co., said in the press release. "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."
More specifically, by 2020 Nissan aims to introduce autonomous drive vehicles that are able to navigate in nearly any situation, including the most complex scenario - city driving.
Under the terms of the deal, NASA will have access to Nissan's expertise in innovative component technologies from autonomous vehicles, its research regarding the development of vehicular transport applications, as well as relevant prototype systems and test beds for robotic software.
"All of our potential topics of research collaboration with Nissan are areas in which Ames has strongly contributed to major NASA programs," said S. Pete Worden, director of Ames Research Center. "Ames developed Mars rover planning software, robots onboard the International Space Station and Next Generation air traffic management systems to name a few. We look forward to applying knowledge developed during this partnership toward future space and aeronautics endeavors."
"This partnership brings together the best and brightest of NASA and Nissan and validates our investments in Silicon Valley," Ghosn further added.
