Nissan is a collaboration with NASA entered into for the development of autonomously driving vehicles. The technology to be developed may be useful not only for self-propelled cars, but also, for example, rovers that NASA bet on Mars.
The cooperation agreement has a term of five years. Nissan will be the research, particularly in Silicon Valley, where the r&d laboratory. Also NASA is with its Ames Research Center in California active. There is other research into robotics.
Nissan says a lot to learn from the technology that NASA has used in the two robotwagentjes that on the surface of Mars, Spirit and Opportunity. The so-called Mars Rovers are very reliable. In addition, NASA has the technology developed to the robotwagentjes over a distance of millions of kilometers.
NASA, in turn, expect to benefit from the research that Nissan run to autonomous vehicles. Nissan will run the other tests with electric cars in urban areas as a whole, automatically can find their way. Because the traffic in cities is often chaotic and unpredictable, it is for companies like Nissan are a huge challenge to develop technology that a car safely through the city to let it ride. NASA hopes that the technology of the Nissan can be used to robotwagentjes on distant planets to give more autonomy.
