New Nissan driving tech to help avoid accidents

Jiji Press

11:48 JST, April 27, 2022

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — Nissan Motor Co. on Monday unveiled an autonomous driving technology designed to prevent accidents by detecting successive sudden moves by cars and pedestrians.

The major Japanese automaker will work to improve the technology further with the aim of installing it to new vehicles from the mid-2020s and to almost all vehicles by 2030.

Using the LiDAR sensor system, a car with the technology can, for example, change lanes quickly to prevent a collision with a vehicle abruptly coming in front of the car and soon after that apply the brake to avoid hitting a pedestrian jumping into the road, according to Nissan.

Current autonomous driving technologies can avoid accident risks one by one, but cannot deal with successive risk situations, Nissan officials said.

Nissan substantially improved the performance of the LiDAR system to enable it to figure out the shapes of objects near the vehicle and measure the distances to the items and their movements accurately and instantly.

“We’ve made possible the automation of emergency avoidance maneuvers in a complex situation that can happen,” Nissan Senior Vice President Takao Asami said.

For the practical use of the technology, Nissan will work to enable it to operate under any weather conditions and cut costs sizably.