Nissan to pilot ITS model

Sharon

Sharon Gill

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24th October 2008

The pilot project will be conducted in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture for a two-month period from November 1st to December 27th.

This represents the first and largest such experiment of its kind, involving 500 pedestrians and 200 drivers, and in collaboration with Japanese mobile network operator, NTT DoCoMo.

Using a special cellular phone that is compatible with the Nissan navigation system on-board test vehicles, participants will simply follow their regular daily routines, commuting within the neighbourhood.

The pilot aims to achieve two objectives:

• Verification of the effectiveness of the system to support safer driving – Nissan will monitor the changes in driver behaviour, such as response time and deceleration after the alert, for quantitative analysis.

• Optimisation of data-processing logic – Nissan will test the data-processing logic, based on a sophisticated software program, which can determine a pedestrian on the street, by identifying the data sent from the cellular phone carried by the pedestrian and calculating the speed of the moving-target.

Nissan began the basic test of the system in April 2007. By conducting a large-scaled community-based trial with real-world data tracking, Nissan is moving beyond the initial basic testing towards a commercially viable system.

How the system works: As a vehicle approaches an area where there are many blind intersections, the navigation system can warn the driver about a pedestrian out of sight around the corner, by voice message and screen display. The information server detects data transmitted via GPS to the cellular phone carried by the pedestrian and sends it to the vehicle navigation system, which then triggers the alert.

According to statistics from the Japan National Police Agency, 30% of fatal accidents involve pedestrians. Nissan aims to halve the number of accidents involving Nissan vehicles resulting in fatality or serious injury by 2015.