Nissan announced yesterday the opening of their expanded research and development facility in Silicon Valley. The new California research center is initially specializing in autonomous driving and connected cars.
The new Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley (NRC-SV) will be focusing on three main aspects: Research of autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles that can tap into infrastructure and the internet, and research in the area of Human-Machine interface in order to enhance the experience of autonomous and connected vehicles.
Nissan hopes that having the NRC-SV located in Silicon Valley will help spur collaborative partnerships with other companies and research institutions not otherwise accessible to their R&D facility in Japan.
Nissan is clearly looking to a future with autonomous vehicles driving around. With today’s technology of blind spot warring, computer-controlled lane correction, and adaptive cruise control – not to mention the efforts (and many successes) of other companies like Google in the area of driverless cars – the idea of our cars driving us around doesn’t seem too far-fetched anymore.
