Nissan/Infiniti trials autonomy in traffic

Nissan Motor Company has taken an Infiniti Q50 into the streets of Tokyo to test its autonomous driving technology.

The test is in real-world traffic in of one of the world’s most congested cities.

The company has taken its “ProPilot” driverless systems to urban streets, highways and through busy intersections. Nissan’s prototype uses 12 sonar points, 12 cameras, nine millimetre-wave radar nodes (used for short-range, high accuracy radar systems like military tanks) supported by six laser scanners and a high-definition mapping system to analyse the environment.

The ProPilot demonstration follows the Leaf EV’s closed-circuit trials with the autonomous systems earlier this year.

“Our next-generation ProPilot prototype showcases technology that will be available for real world use from 2020,” says Takao Asami, Nissan’s senior vice president of research and advanced engineering.

The publicly available Inifinti Q50 features a range of semi-autonomous functions, including predictive forward collision warning, lane departure and “active lane control”, reverse collision intervention, and a 360-degree camera with moving object detection, as well as adaptive cruise control.