Nissan and NASA might be teaming up for something out of this world

Nissan's next step towards in developing the autonomous driving system is out of the world. Literally!

In one of the most massive developments in the field of smart driving solutions, Japanese car manufacturer Nissan will be teaming up with international space agency NASA to develop its autonomous driving systems. 

Director of Nissan Research Center in Sunnyvale, California Maarten Sierhuis who spoke at the CAR Management Briefing in Michigan said: "Show me an autonomous system without a human in the loop and I'll show you a useless system". 

The collaboration with NASA will, however, be based on resource sharing. The Japanese auto giant is planning on incorporating a human element in the functioning of the autonomous driving system. 

The company claims that the new system will constantly monitor the vehicle at all times. Additionally, Nissan will also have a human operator that would remotely send alternate routed and notify the driver about constructions or other unexpected road conditions. And this is where NASA comes into play. 

The carmaker in order to enhance the real-time connection between the operator and driver will utilize the robotic technology that was used by NASA to contact its Mars rovers. 

Christened as SAM (Seamless Autonomous Mobility), the technology will make use of large amounts of video and sensor data that will be transmitted from the vehicle in real time. 

"You have to put a lot of data into a small pipe," Sierhuis said. "NASA is good at that," reported Automotive News. 

Additionally, the company will also adopt the technology used by air traffic controllers to control numerous flights at the same time to enable the human operators to manage the cars with ease. 

"The goal is to have the operator be able to manage as many vehicles as possible," Sierhuis said. "It's a scalable situation." reported Automotive News. 

Nissan's current system, also known as the ProPILOT system is designed for the highway use in single-lane traffic. The Japanese automaker is the first company in the world to introduce a combination of steering, accelerator, and braking that can be operated in the fully automatic mode, which the company claims would help in easing driver workload in heavy traffic conditions.