Engineers at Nissan's Advanced Technology Center in Japan are hoping to create a buzz when they unveil a project at CEATEC this week that attempts to recreate a bumblebee's compound-eye vision and natural instincts to design a next-generation of crash-avoidance systems.
To show how the technology works, Nissan and the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo have built the Biomimetic Car Robot Drive, or BR23C. The robotic micro-car, which bears a striking resemblance to Nissan's Pivo2 concept, uses bee behavior to prevent collisions and is one of several new safety technologies Nissan is developing as part of its "Safety Shield" that classifies driving risks and accidents into six stages.
The BR23C robotic car is the inner-most layer of the shield, and is akin to what Nissan's researchers say is the "personal space" a bee flies in. But then bees don't have to contend with other members of their hive yakking on cell phones when flying next to them.
Nissan says a bee's compound eyes are capable of an angle of view of more than 300-degrees, and its quick reflexes allow collision-free flight inside its personal space. To recreate the function of a bee's compound eye, Nissan engineers came up with a Laser Range Finder (LRF) that detects obstacles up to 2 meters away within a 180-degree radius in front of the BR23C and gauges the distance to them. The LRF then sends a signal to an on-board microprocessor that's instantly translated into collision-avoidance instructions for the vehicle.
"The split second it detects an obstacle, the car robot will mimic the movements of a bee and instantly change direction by turning its wheels at right angles or greater to avoid a collision," Toshiyuki Andou, manager of Nissan's Mobility Laboratory and principal engineer of the project, explained. "The biggest difference to any current system is that the avoidance maneuver is totally instinctive. It must happen within the blink of an eye."
But BR23C can't deviate upwards or downwards or diagonally like a bee, only in two dimensions and only in the direction that the wheels can turn. So the Nissan system uses a rotation function in addition to acceleration and deceleration.
And until vehicles can act like locusts or bumblebees, keeping your own limited eyes on the road is still the best crash-avoidance system possible.
ateixeira says:
09:37 AM, 10/ 1/08
WTF people?
First locusts, now bumblebees?
Why don't you study HUMAN behavior, i.e. the people behind the wheel?
hondacura4 says:
04:06 PM, 10/ 1/08
More automotive electronic "safety technology" for people who dont pay attention while driving.....how nice.
I still think the gov't or whoever should implement a much better system for getting a drivers liscence, similar to how the Europeans do it.