January 9, 2015

John Hopton for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

NASA has announced that it will work on a five-year project with automakers Nissan, to develop and test zero-emission, autonomous cars that they hope will change the face of Earthly driving as well as improving vehicles in space.

The project will be based in Silicon Valley, where Nissans research center in Sunnyvale is a stones throw from NASAs Ames Research Center. NASAs unparalleled level of expertise when it comes to engineering, robotics, and making reliable, durable machines will combine with work Nissan has already begun on creating autonomous vehicles.

While NASAs vehicles have done a remarkable job of negotiating galactic terrains, Nissan can bring their knowledge of taking on the urban environment with quickly-reacting vehicles. NASA may have made it to Mars, but its rovers never had to contend with cyclists, stop signs and pedestrians wandering across the street while playing on their phones.

This is a perfect blend of the capability of what the robotics folks at NASA Ames have and the autonomy that we bring, Nissans Maarten Sierhuis told Wired. Sierhuis is the director of Nissans Silicon Valley research center and also spent ten years as a NASA senior scientist. While NASAs space vehicles demonstrate an astonishing level of technological advancement, they are not entirely autonomous. However, they may need to be more to be more autonomous in future as space exploration expands and the machines become more complex.

The timing is right because we are ready to start testing, Sierhuis added.

NASA can teach automakers a lot about the interaction between man and machine, says Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn. In a statement that encapsulates the magnitude of the project and its ambitions, he says that: When we talk about autonomous drive, were transforming the relationship between the driver and the car from a master to slave, to a kind of partner.

The first stage for the project is to extend the maps Nissan uses in its autonomous driving simulator, which currently cover the immediate area around its research center, to include the Ames campus. The aim then is to have a car on the road by the end of 2015, which can be improved upon over five years.

We gain time, we gain knowledge, we gain expertise, Ghosn says. Thats what the whole thing is aboutmoving as fast as we can.

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NASA, Nissan team up to make self-driving, emission-free vehicles