THESE: Ghosn (Renault-Nissan) announces a boost in the autonomous cars – The Parisian

Carlos Ghosn, the boss of the Renault-Nissan alliance, announced on Thursday several initiatives aimed at accelerating its efforts in autonomous cars, but also unveiled a new system capable of restoring a human action at a distance in the case of an insoluble problem.
During a presentation at the salon of electronics ces in Las Vegas, Mr. Ghosn has announced the addition by Nissan features driving semi-autonomous on the next version of its Leaf electric car, as well as the launch this year of trials in Japan for applications in commercial vehicles, without a driver.
“The next Leaf will be equipped with our technology of autonomous control ProPilot,” he said.
This technology allows the vehicle to drive on the motorway remaining in the same lane, and is the first step of the strategy of the group in order to arrive at the cars driving really all alone. It had been introduced for the next time last year as a pay option on a minivan, Serena reserved to the japanese market.
Nissan will also begin this year in Japan, in collaboration with the local company DeNA, tests of commercial uses, such as deliveries, for example, using vehicles without a driver.
These tests are expected to extend gradually to other countries, and then in horizon 2020 the transport of persons in the Tokyo metropolis.
Nissan has announced at the same time at SUCH a new platform (Seamless Autonomous Mobility, SAM) – inspired technologies in Nasa, and intended to lead to the day where there will be more of a driver in the car, to re-establish human control of remote in the rare case where the artificial intelligence will not be able to find a solution all alo ne.
“This is not a luxury, it is a necessity”, stated during the presentation Maarten Sierhuis, director of the research center of Nissan in the Silicon Valley.
He gave the example of a car that ends up behind a truck stopped in the middle of the road and that may not be exceeded without crossing a continuous line, or work at an intersection where a human indicates for cars to pass in spite of a red light.
“For a conductor human, the problems are annoying but simple to solve, while an autonomous car is going to stay stuck because it is necessary to violate normal rules of conduct that it is scheduled to meet, said Mr Sierhuis.
The system SAM, will allow the autonomous vehicle to send an alert to a remote support service, for which a human would access the data collected by its sensors, radars and other cameras, analyze the situation, and will communicate the procedure to follow, as well as to other autonomous cars equipped located in the vicinity an d is likely, therefore, to have the same problem.