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Nissan takes on the future with help from NASA
By Product Expert | Posted in Features & Technology, News on Friday, January 6th, 2017 at 6:03 pm
Nissan Intelligent Mobility and Seamless Autonomous Mobility
Most of us here at Glendale Nissan have been driving for more than a decade, if not quite a few. We remember when A/C and cruise control were considered luxuries, so learning about the Nissan plans for Nissan Intelligent Mobility and Seamless Autonomous Mobility are a bit mind-blowing. The Nissan Leaf has been on the market for quite a while, and it seems the goal is to provide a lot more home integration, autonomous features and charging infrastructure built right into our roadways. At least, that’s the future that Nissan imagines.
What is Nissan Intelligent Mobility
As the automaker puts it:
Nissan Intelligent Mobility is a blueprint for transforming how cars are driven, powered, and integrated into wider society. These technologies will advance mobility toward a zero-emission, zero-fatality future on the roads.
At its essence, the purpose is to bring electric vehicles fully into our lifestyle, allow them to be completely autonomous, and as a result prevent accidents with other vehicles and pedestrians, thereby eliminating vehicle-related deaths.
Goals were laid out in three key categories:
- Nissan Intelligent Integration: Efforts to bring autonomous personal and commercial concepts into reality
- Nissan Intelligent Power: New Leaf with single-lane highway, ProPilot technology
- Nissan Intelligent Driving: Integrating personal assistance software like Microsoft Cortana
These are all simplifications of the overall strategy, but a more overarching view of the goals, as well as the CES 2017 footage, can be seen below.
Current Technology: Nissan Intuitive All-Wheel Drive
What is Seamless Autonomous Mobility?
One of the big hitches in the autonomous driving development is the fact that we need vehicles that can fit into the current automotive landscape. One in which other drivers and pedestrians commit unpredictable actions. There are plenty of situations that can be programmed, but artificial intelligence needs to be created so that cars can “learn” and get even better without too much additional programming.
Seamless Autonomous Mobility, AKA SAM, is the name of AI technology being designed by Nissan and NASA that is meant to help with unpredictable situations. In a nutshell, the technology allows the vehicle to sense situations in which it isn’t capable of navigation on its own, then sends control to a remote operator to create a new path for the vehicle to navigate, on the spot. Best of all, this path is sent to other autonomous vehicles so the operators aren’t bogged down by the same issue.
The goal is to get technology introduced earlier. Testing is one thing, but the faster we get vehicles introduced en masse, the faster we can fix any kinks. The key is to find a way to do things safely, and SAM seems to be the solution.
Are you excited by what you’ve seen from Nissan at CES 2017? Let us know what you think with a comment below, and be sure to check back at the Glendale Nissan Blog for more.
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