Page 23 - atoday

TECHNOLOGY A23
Thursday 5 November 2015

Nissan test car drives itself safely, recognizes pedestrians

YURI KAGEYAMA Nissan Motor Co. General Manager Tetsuya Iijima gets his hands off of the steering wheel of a self-driving prototype vehicle during
AP Business Writer a test drive in Tokyo, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2015.
TOKYO (AP) — Being a pas-
senger in a self-driving car Associated Press
is similar to being driven
around by a very cautious driving option for vehicles Nissan General Manager severe world.” ogy it was working on.
person, maybe your grand-
mother. going on sale in 2020. Tetsuya Iijima, who was the The system was shown in “Nissan’s plans to succes-
Requiring neither hands
on the steering wheel nor It plans to have abbreviat- human driver for the test Nissan’s Leaf electric ve- sively deploy piloted drive
a foot on the gas pedal or ed versions of the technol- ride, acknowledged the hicle, meaning it was not technologies keep the
brakes, the Nissan Motor ogy starting from next year, system needs fine-tuning. only intelligent but also ze- automaker at or near the
Co. car making its way on
Japanese public roads is in- such as keeping a safe dis- But he was confident it ro-emission. leading edge of the indus-
stead packed with radars,
lasers, cameras and com- tance from the car in front was the way of the future, Its trunk space was filled try in driver assistance tech-
puter chips.
Nissan’s “intelligent driving” on congested roads. delivering better safety, with electronics and wiring, nology both in Japan and
feature is smart enough to
navigate intersections with- The car experienced by because more than 90 per- evidence of the computer worldwide,” he said.
out lane markers. It also
brakes safely to a stop with- The Associated Press is still cent of traffic accidents technology needed to inte- “Overall it is a comprehen-
out crashing into the ve-
hicle in front, and it knows unable to deal with unex- are caused by driver error. grate the information from sive system that will allow
the difference between a
red light and a tail-lamp. pected situations, such as When compared with a hu- the car’s many sensors, ra- Nissan to continue to inno-
Reporters were given a moving to the side of the man, Nissan’s prototype is dars and 360-degree cam- vate and add functionality
half-hour test ride in the road if an ambulance ap- only 3 or 4 years old, maybe eras. When it goes on sale, in the future.”
prototype vehicle Tuesday
on a scenic but pre-pro- proaches. At one point, the 6 at most, and the goal is to the electronics system will Nissan plans to tailor the
grammed course on To-
kyo roads, which included human driver, who was in help it mature to a 20-year- be much smaller and tidier. feature to various markets.
stopping at traffic lights,
making turns, changing the seat for the whole test old, he said. Jeremy Carlson, senior In the U.S., where there
lanes and crossing a bridge
across the bay. The car was ride, had to intervene be- “It’s like a kid,” said Iijima, analyst at IHS Automotive, tends to be long driving
painstakingly careful, like
someone extra cautious on cause the car didn’t prop- emulating a child walking who is an expert on au- on highways, a feature
the road.
It always stayed within the erly recognize an unclearly slowly, a step at a time. tonomous driving, praised that might work like an en-
speed limit. And it slowed
down, appearing to be drawn lane. “We need to make it un- Nissan for having “a clear hanced auto-cruise would
“thinking” at slightly com- Otherwise, it did fine. derstand the world — the roadmap” for the technol- be handy.q
plicated situations, such as
cars coming from another
lane. The system is de-
signed to recognize people
and if a pedestrian jumped
out onto the road, the car
should come to a stop.
Nissan, which also makes
the Infiniti luxury model and
the March subcompact, is
preparing the autonomous

Google will let artificial intelligence reply to your email

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — how to take over some of search results. Google expects its new Google unveiled Inbox a
Google is putting a differ- the tasks typically handled In this instance, Google “smart reply” option to year ago as a more sophis-
ent twist on the concept by humans. says it has created a pro- be particularly popular ticated alternative to its
of “automated reply” with The most conspicuous ex- gram that identifies which when people are check- popular Gmail service. The
a new tool that aims to ample so far has been incoming emails merit ing emails on smartphones Mountain View, California,
write artificially intelligent Google’s 6-year-old proj- quick responses and then equipped with smaller, company hasn’t said how
responses to your email. ect developing cars that figures out the appropri- touch-screen keyboards. many people have installed
The technology is part of an can drive without a human ate wording. Up to three The new feature is available Inbox. Gmail has more than
update to Google’s Inbox steering the wheel. Google choices will be offered as to all consumers who use 400 million worldwide users,
app for managing and or- also has been using an ar- a reply before it’s sent. The the free version of Inbox, as according to the research
ganizing email. The feature tificial intelligence program responses that people se- well as the more than 2 mil- firm comScore.
announced Tuesday is the called “RankBrain” to help lect are supposed to help lion businesses who pay for Google is part of a recently
latest example of Google’s determine the pecking or- Google’s computers learn Google’s suite of applica- formed parent company,
effort to teach machines der in its influential Internet which ones work best. tions designed for work. Alphabet Inc.q