Artificial intelligence

Teaching a Car How to Drive Itself Is Slightly More Complicated Than Sending It to a Driving School.

- Debabrata Sarkar

My hands are on the steering wheel but they aren’t really doing anything. I’ve had my feet off the pedals for a while and have resigned myself to not doing much else than watching the road and making sure I’m out of everyone else’s way. I’ve set the ProPilot to the stipulated speed limit, but even the Japanese seem to make allowances to go past it, which is why I need to stay out of others’ way. However, on a well-marked freeway, Nissan’s ProPilot holds true, sticking to the lane, correcting the steering to maintain its line, even around gentle corners, and using the brakes to keep safe distance from the car in front. This, according to Nissan, is the first step towards autonomous driving and the carmaker has chosen to introduce it in a rather plain mini-van – the Serena hybrid. From the statistics, it seems the Japanese love it, and more than half of them, buying the Serena, have opted for it.