Engineers, software experts, specialists in sensor technology and artificial intelligence, computer scientists, production specialists and many others have all helped create a holistic view that Nissan believes is crucial to obtaining the autonomous cars of the future, designed with the user in mind. Moreover, this heterogeneous group of professionals includes anthropologists specialising in ethnography, who study the relationship of humans with objects – in this case, automobiles.
“You can´t remove human beings from the equation when talking about autonomous driving”, argues Maarten Sierhuis, the Nissan innovation specialist who has also worked for NASA. Human-in-the-loop or HITL is defined as a model that requires human interaction and is the concept that Nissan has always embraced on its path towards autonomous, safe driving capable of being implemented in the near future. The goal is simple: First of all, we need to understand how human conduct and behaviour work, in order to create systems that people are happy to use.
On the one hand, “people need to be able to interact with an autonomous system as if they were interacting with a person”, says Maarten Sierhuis. On the other, the autonomous car itself must also be able to interact with humans, both inside and outside the vehicle. There are, however, situations in which the vehicle is incapable of making certain decisions without human assistance. “We call these situations 'exceptional situations'”, explains the managing director of technology at the Nissan Innovation Lab in Silicon Valley. However, tests indicate that autonomous cars are already capable of dealing with 90% of traffic situations.
THE HUMANDRIVE PROJECT
Late last year, Nissan completed the longest and most complex journey undertaken with an autonomous car, a fact that marked a major milestone in the design of this type of vehicle. The drive came to a successful end on 28 November 2019, with two engineers monitoring the performance of a Nissan Leaf on a permanent basis. It was a 370-kilometer self-drive journey along the roads of the United Kingdom, conducted as part of the HumanDrive research project.
A Nissan Leaf completed a 370-kilometer drive in the United Kingdom with no human intervention
In addition to the journey, the project concluded another trial: an analysis based on track testing, which explored human-like driving using machine learning to improve the user experience. The initiative is a reflection of the latest advances in mobility and autonomous cars, an area that is expected to undergo rapid and significant developments in the near future.