Nissan and NASA to extend R&D partnership

This month Nissan North America have announced their extended partnership with NASA as they jointly explore, research and develop technology, in a bid to create a future for autonomous mobility. The update to the existing research collaboration between Nissan and NASA in Silicon Valley, builds on previous success to define a new scope of activities into 2019.

Having agreed upon a five-year research and development partnership, the two companies have been and will be continuing to work together to advance autonomous vehicle systems.

Debuted at CES 2018, the Seamless Autonomous mobility (SAM) tech, a new platform for managing fleets of autonomous vehicles, developed from NASA technology.

“We built SAM from technology NASA developed for managing interplanetary rovers as they move around unpredictable landscapes,” said Maarten Sierhuis, director of the Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley. “Our goal is to deploy SAM to help third-party organizations safely integrate a fleet of autonomous vehicles in unpredictable urban environments, for example ride-hailing services, public transportation or logistics and delivery services. The final stage of our existing research agreement with NASA will bring us closer to that goal and test SAM in a working demonstration on public streets.”

“One of NASA’s strategic goals is to transfer the technology developed to advance NASA mission and program objectives to broader commercial and social applications,” said Eugene Tu, Center Director, NASA Ames. “Using NASA’s work in robotics to accelerate the deployment of autonomous mobility services is a perfect example of how the considerable work required to advance space exploration can also pioneer advances here on Earth.”

SAM represents a major milestone in Nissan Intelligent Integration, providing the infrastructure to safely and seamlessly integrate autonomous mobility services into existing urban environments.