There was a plethora of self driving autonomous vehicle announcements and demos at CES from Ford, Mercedes Benz, Audi, BMW and more. Nissan wasn’t at CES but joined with NASA to rocket into the self-driving spotlight. NASA knows how to test the Mars Rover and will test cars on earth.
Nissan and NASA today announced the formation of a five-year research and development partnership for developing autonomous self-driving cars.
Researchers from Nissan’s U.S. Silicon Valley Research Center and NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., will the test and design hardware and software for Nissan’s autonomous cars.
Researchers will test a fleet of zero-emission autonomous vehicles at Ames to demonstrate proof-of-concept remote operation and enable the transport of materials, goods, payloads and people
The partnership should speed up Nissan’s development of reliable autonomous drive technology that will be progressively introduced to consumers beginning in 2016 up to 2020.
NASA will have the advantage of learning from Nissan’s vehicular transport applications, and access to appropriate prototype systems and provision of test beds for robotic software.