Nissan has signed-on a powerful to ally to assist with the development of autonomous cars – NASA.
Nissan’s U.S. Silicon Valley Research Centre will work with NASA’s Ames Research Centre at Moffett Field, California over the next five years to prepare commercial applications for autonomous vehicle systems.
The research will include drive systems, interface solutions, network applications and software.
NASA’s Moffet Field facility will be used to safely test a fleet of zero emissions autonomous vehicles (should be a piece of cake as NASA already drives planetary rover vehicles from its mission control centre).
In fact that location developed the planning software for the Mars rover vehicles, the robots currently on-board the International Space Station and Next Generation air traffic management systems..
Nissan reckons by 2020 it will be ready to introduce autonomous drive vehicles with the ability to navigate in the most complex locations include major cities.
“The work of NASA and Nissan – with one directed to space and the other directed to earth, is connected by similar challenges,” revealed Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.
But not even that might cold crack V8 Supercars and the Australian Nissan drivers will not be able to join their international counterparts racing the factory-prepared GT-R’s at the upcoming Bathurst 12-Hour – instead they’ll be testing the Altimas at Eastern Creek.
That’s not progressive thinking, that’s a roadblock.
