Nasa and Nissan partner on self-driving car project
Nasa has partnered with Nissan on a five-year research and development project for driverless cars.
The partnership looks “to advance autonomous vehicle systems and prepare for commercial application of the technology” in both cars and space rovers.
“The work of Nasa and Nissan – with one directed to space and the other directed to earth, is connected by similar challenges,” explained Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Nissan.
“The partnership will accelerate Nissan’s development of safe, secure and reliable autonomous drive technology that we will progressively introduce to consumers beginning in 2016 up to 2020.”
Researchers from Nissan’s Silicon Valley research centre and Nasa’s Ames research centre will focus on self-drive systems, interface solutions, applications, and software analysis.
They will then test a fleet of zero-emission driverless vehicles at Ames.
The partnership will help Nissan meet its 2020 deadline for the introduction of self-driving cars while Nasa believes it will benefit from the car makers expertise in component technologies for autonomous vehicles and access to prototype systems.
“This partnership brings together the best and brightest of Nasa and Nissan and validates our investments in Silicon Valley,” added Ghosn.
From the end of 2015, Nasa hopes to be able to begin testing the first fleet of self-driving vehicles.
The annoucement comes following CES 2015, where both Mercedes and Audi revealed plans for driverless cars.