Nissan, NASA to collaborate on research into future autonomous vehicles

In a bid to create a roadmap for the technology and business evolution of the automotive industry, Nissan has announced a fresh agreement with NASA.

NASA Ames Research Centre in California's Silicon Valley and Nissan will collaborate on research and technology development for future autonomous mobility services, including a working demonstration in Silicon Valley.

Researchers from the Nissan Research Centre in Silicon Valley and NASA Ames have been working together to advance autonomous vehicle systems.

In January last year, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nissan introduced Nissan Seamless Autonomous Mobility (SAM), a new platform for managing fleets of autonomous vehicles, developed from NASA technology.

"We built SAM from technology NASA developed for managing interplanetary rovers as they move around unpredictable landscapes," said Maarten Sierhuis, director of the Nissan Research Centre in Silicon Valley.

"The final stage of our existing research agreement with NASA will bring us closer to that goal and test SAM in a working demonstration on public streets," he added.

The research collaboration with NASA roadmap consists of three workstreams of inter-related innovations in autonomous drive (Intelligent Drive), electrification (Intelligent Power) and infrastructure technologies (Intelligent Integration).

"One of NASA's strategic goals is to transfer the technology developed to advance NASA mission and programme objectives to broader commercial and social applications," said Eugene Tu, Centre Director, NASA Ames.