Designing the autonomous vehicle of the future requires an array of the best technical talent available: automobile and software engineers, experts on sensor technology and artificial intelligence, computer scientists, production specialists, and many others. Bedford Nissan shares the passion and thrill of what type of new Nissan vehicles these talented professionals will develop in the future.
The Nissan brand and its team of researchers are focused on the third milestone of its autonomous vehicle program — development of the capability for the vehicle to navigate city driving and intersections without driver intervention. This system is expected to be introduced in 2020, following the release in July 2016 of the first of the brand’s autonomous drive technologies, known as ProPILOT, an autonomous drive technology designed for highway use in single-lane traffic, and a “multiple-lane” application that can autonomously negotiate hazards and change lanes during highway driving, due in 2018.
To add these systems into new Nissan cars, the research team began documenting not just interactions in the city involving drivers, but also those between vehicles and pedestrians, bicyclists, and road features. It looked for key lessons for what an autonomous vehicle will need to know — what it perceives in the world and then how it can make sense, make judgments, and behave itself to be able to interact effectively in those different systems.
The research team is examining potentially problematic situations in order to ensure that the vehicle is a “good citizen” on the road. For example, the next-generation Nissan autonomous vehicles introduced in the next decade might include a light that “acknowledges” the presence of a pedestrian. The research team is also exploring how to communicate the car’s intention in situations where “multiple agents” – say numerous pedestrians or bicyclists – are present. The key would be how to communicate what the vehicle is doing – like stopping, waiting, yielding, about to go, going, things like that – in a way that would be interpreted in the same way by everyone.
Until we know more about what these incredible autonomous vehicles will do, we encourage you to stop by Bedford Nissan and talk to our dealers about our vast inventory of Nissan vehicles. We’ll see you soon!
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