Nissan has long been one of the few automotive giants to fix their gaze firmly on the future. While other manufacturers debate whether or not to add racing stripes or a fifth wheel, Nissan looks at the more fundamental role of the car as a societal tool and predicts how it (and our needs) will evolve. Their electric prodigy, the Nissan Leaf, seems to be in the vanguard of many of these futuristic endeavours. That is certainly true of their Intelligent Vehicle Towing project (IVT), implemented at their Oppama Plant in Japan.
A driverless Nissan Leaf, hitched to a vehicle towing trolley bearing as many as three other vehicles, navigates itself around the plant as well as to and from the loading wharf, making deliveries. It doesn’t run on rails and it isn’t guided by magnetic tape or similar haltering technologies. Instead, by using active mapping technology, it determines its own best course between its pick-up and drop-off points in real time.
By relying on onboard laser scanners and cameras, the driverless Leaf continuously analyses its environment and acts independently to avoid dangers and obstacles. If a penguin (don’t ask) were to wander in front of the Leaf, it would stop and only continue once the coast was clear.
If there were only one such Leaf running around the Oppama Plant, this would be a curious story but not necessarily remarkable. The truth is there are multiple IVT systems running simultaneously and seamlessly at all hours. A central traffic control system integrates and monitors the entire fleet, making sure the individual systems don’t step on each other’s toes and determining which has right of way over the other. In fact, the IVT system has replaced the team of drivers who habitually transported newly minted cars from the Oppama assembly line and to the shipping wharf.
While the hype over self driving cars has spurred a lot of debate and not a little protest (for example, from the drivers of the UTA in Upstate New York), we’re still light years from achieving Artificial Intelligence. The Singularity, a term coined by John von Neumann in the 1950’s, predicts the point where Artificial Intelligence outstrips humanity and leads to the rise of the machines as the dominant species on the planet. The idea has inspired many successful science fiction franchises, such as the Terminator saga.
So unless you spot Arnold Schwarzenegger exiting a Nissan Leaf, you can breathe easy.
