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Nissan Studying Fish Schools To Develop Safer Cars
The way fishes behave in schools is fascinating. Large schools consisting of thousands of animals manage to swim extremely close to each other without colliding. Moreover, when attacked by predators the whole school of fish actually behave as a single organism, moving and dodging the attacks as a single entity. It is this astonishing, seemingly impossible behaviour that has caught the imaginations of scientists for a long time.
One section of the researchers who have always been interested in fish behaviour belong to the automobile industry. The simple reason being that if we could develop personal city vehicles that could somehow mimic fish behaviour we could permanently solve our traffic problems and bring down road accident cases. The gallery below shows Nissan's research work in this field.
Seven small robots, developed by Nissan Motor Company, called EPOROS or zero emission robot car concept hold the key to changing the future of mobility.
These tiny and rather cute looking robots are powered by electricity and guided by complex algorithms, which enables them to "move in harmony and in solitude."
Engineer Susumu Fujita, who created these robots in 2009, says the robots behaviour is inspired by the way fish swim, who, like the fish, "move in schools, in streams, and avoid obstacles."
These images are from EPOROSs' first visit to the U.S, where they were shown off at the new Nissan Research Center - Silicon Valley.
Nissan says, "While Nissan's ongoing research aims at creating collision-free vehicles based on its safety concept "Safety Shield," new technologies used in EPORO also aim to improve migration efficiency of a group of vehicles and contribute to an environmentally friendly and traffic jam-free driving environment."
"The technology in these robots is similar to what will be used to build and perfect an autonomous car. The EPORO can already follow the leader, even if the leader is me," said Fujita-san.
Nissan has already incorporated a few features, developed from the ongoing research in its production cars such as intelligent brake assist and forward collision warning.
"These EPOROs are pushing ideas of what's possible onto a new fast track of the future."
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