Nissan and NASA to jointly test self-driving cars at Ames Research Center

[Buster's Uncle]

Nissan and NASA to jointly test self-driving cars at Ames Research Center
San Jose Mercury News
By Steve Johnson sjohnson@mercurynews.com  Posted:   01/09/2015 02:16:44 PM  | Updated:   about 5 hours ago



The all-electric Nissan Leaf fitted with autonomous drive equipment allowed to park at NASA's Ames Research Center. (Nissan photo)



MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Bolstering Silicon Valley's stature as a center of autonomous-car research, Nissan and NASA have announced a five-year partnership to develop self-driving vehicles at Moffett Field.

They plan to begin testing the vehicles later this year at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, with the goal of incorporating what they learn about self-driving technology into everything from commuter cars to NASA's Mars rover. They added that some of the innovations they develop will appear in Nissan's existing fleet of vehicles next year and that new models able to drive themselves in busy cities will be sold commercially by 2020.

"This is a very exciting collaboration," said Ames Research Center Director S. Pete Worden, when asked why NASA wanted to partner with the carmaker. "We're finding in a lot of different areas that the private sector has come up with some pretty clever solutions that we haven't thought of."

Worden said NASA expects to incorporate what it learns from the partnership in many of its space vehicles. Noting that the Mars rover sometimes blunders into treacherous terrain, for example, he said the agency hopes Nissan will help it improve the rover's ability to avoid such problems.

Nissan, which already has been testing autonomous vehicles at its Silicon Valley Research Center in Sunnyvale, also believes it can benefit from working with NASA.

Impressed by the agency's ability to design space vehicles that operate nearly flawlessly millions of miles from Earth, the carmaker hopes to learn how to build that same reliability into its self-driving autos, according to spokesman Jeff Kuhlman. In addition, he said, Ames Research Center has expertise in information security, which is important, given fears that cybercrooks might try to hack into and remotely take control of autonomous vehicles.

As a result of the partnership, Nissan within 18 months believes it will be able to outfit many of its existing models with the ability to speed up, slow down and stay in the same lane on highways without human intervention, Kuhlman said. Within three years, those vehicles also should be given the ability to autonomously switch highway lanes, he added. And by 2020, Nissan's goal is to introduce a car that can drive itself in congested urban areas.

Mountain View-based Google, which also is testing its most advanced self-driving car at Moffett Field, declined to comment on Nissan's plans to use the facility.

Besides Google and Nissan, five other companies have obtained permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test self-driving cars. They are Palo Alto-based Tesla, Volkswagen, Bosch, Delphi Automotive and Mercedes-Benz, which has leased the former Concord Naval Weapons Station for its tests.

The reason for broad interest in the technology is money. This week, the Boston Consulting Group estimated that by 2025 the market for autonomous cars will total $42 billion.


http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27291214/nissan-and-nasa-jointly-test-self-driving-cars

[Flux]

I remember seeing a google Smartcar just like this in 2009 or something.
It drove itself and communicated with the road and other cars. Really, the question is when they're going to be able to mass produce these.
Then again, most sci-fi tech could be made if money grew on trees and inflation was brutually murdered.