Nissan’s quest to develop autonomous driving made the company to build robots that will give them more insight into this project. This project known as Mother Nature has helped the engineers to learn more about autonomous vehicles.
The project is inspired by the behavior of fish forming a school while swimming, the engineers developed Eporo, a robot designed to demonstrate how cars can move safely and efficiently, whether alone or in a group.
Eporo doesn’t use a map, instead, each robot recognizes the other units around it, thinks for itself, and can make decisions.
The robots make use of ultra-wideband communication technology to transmit and receive signals from each other. They can exchange information about their position, speed, and orientation, while distance is calculated based on the signal’s round-trip time.
Each unit’s laser range finder emits a beam to measure the distance to various obstacles. With this, the robots can freely change their shape and travel safely and efficiently in a variety of environments.
They use their sensors to move around corners, navigate roads that narrow suddenly, and avoid obstacles.
When they encounter a bottleneck, the robots can continue to move forward while maintaining an appropriate distance.
