I’ve tried Nissan’s latest advanced driverless technology – and it handles 60mph on rural roads better than most humans

• Nissan will offer driverless mobility service in Japan by 2027
• Latest research project tackles tricky rural environments
• Autonomous services to be rolled out in the UK and Europe

Nissan has been busy working on advanced levels of autonomous driving over the past eight years, racking up thousands of driverless miles in the UK, Japan and the US without incident and proving that its systems can work in the city, as well as in much trickier rural areas.

This week, the company has announced that it will offer its Easy Ride fully autonomous mobility service in Yokohama’s Minato Mirai area by 2027, becoming the first service in Japan to ferry people around a city without a human behind the wheel.

The project has been a collaboration between its numerous engineers in Tokyo, Silicon Valley in the US and Cranfield in the UK, where the team has just completed what it feels is its final phase of autonomous testing before readying its own driverless services in the UK and Europe.

"It is all well and good creating an autonomous vehicle that works in the sunshine and wide roads of the US or Japan, but let’s see if you can make it work on a country road in Britain," Robert Bateman, Manager of Nissan's Research and Advanced Engineering team, explained.

And that’s exactly what the engineers have been doing for the past two years. Thanks in part to a hefty injection of cash from the UK government, it has been able to develop an autonomous system that can not only navigate the bustling streets of London (that project was dubbed ServCity), but also tackle the faster and more unpredictable country roads that connect cities to rural areas.

Ultimately, the idea is to provide mobility to those that need it most by creating an autonomous driving system that connects isolated communities to towns and urban areas. Seeing as rural bus services have more than halved in the UK since 2008, there may well be a business case for it, too.

Hands-off technology

Currently, the research vehicle is built around an older-generation Nissan Leaf EV, complete with six Lidar sensors, radar, 13 cameras, a massive PC set-up in the trunk and a Vehicle-to-Infrastructure antenna.

On that subject, Nissan has been able to tap into an array of dedicated cameras that have been installed on specific autonomous vehicle testing routes in London that allow its driverless EV to “see” obstacles up ahead, such as parked cars or stationary buses, so it can seamlessly maneuver around them without stopping or calling on an operator for help.

Being assertive in busy traffic, merging during rush hour and generally “driving like a competent human” has been the ultimate goal and its most recent bout of testing has arguably been the toughest yet, subjecting the car to the fast, twisting and often scarred road surfaces of rural England.

“We called on Nissan’s chassis engineers to create a new suspension and brake-by-wire system for evolvAD, the final phase of our autonomous testing, purely because we needed greater chassis control at 60mph on country lanes,” Bateman explains.

The system, which sees sensors placed at all four wheels, is constantly scanning the road surface beneath and monitoring grip levels, so the autonomous drive system can adjust its speed accordingly and keep things smooth... and safe.

The numerous cameras and Lidar sensors scan the surroundings and road ahead, making thousands of computations per second, while edge-detection technology and high definition mapping ensure the vehicle stays on the road.

Speedy software

Admittedly, I have been subjected to autonomous driving demonstrations before. Many of them have been in the parking lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center, while some have been on faster highways in the US or Japan.

But nothing could prepare me for the speed and confidence of Nissan’s latest autonomous driving system on Britain's ruinous roads.

Pulling out of the company’s research centre in Cranfield, the vehicle, which had a safety operator behind the wheel just in case, effortlessly navigated a number of roundabouts before accelerating up to 60mph on a long, straight stretch.

So far, so unremarkable, but then the vehicle deftly took a left hand turn and tackled what can only be described as a typically British, unsighted, pot-holed, hedge-lined B-road, barely wide enough for two small cars.

Unflustered, the Leaf smoothly accelerated up to the 60mph speed limit and tackled the route like a local, easing off the gas for tighter corners and slower moving traffic. If said traffic was deemed too slow (think farm machinery and cyclists), it could perform a swift overtake when safe to do so.

Mildly terrifying at first, the experience quickly became more settling when I realized the car was in full control. It was tackling junctions safely, remaining in its lane, even when lane markings weren’t visible, and generally behaving like a good driver. In fact, there were multiple occasions when it was held up by much slower and less competent humans.

Perhaps the only downfall was one particularly large pothole combined with a vehicle speeding in the opposite direction. The operator had to make one minor steering correction to make sure we didn't come to a complete stop, as the vehicle always defaults to the safest option.

On top of this, the operator had to wave a truck out of a T-junction, purely because the fully autonomous vehicle is programmed to not recognize flashing headlights and hand gestures, so didn't realize the van's driver was letting us go.

"The cars have to adhere to the Highway Code," Bateman explained later. But he admitted his team is working on a way for autonomous vehicles to communicate with the wider world to prevent situations like this.

The research vehicle was also fitted with large displays for passengers, which offered a graphical representation of what the car's sensor suite was “seeing”, highlighting its position on the road and picking out traffic or potential obstacles.

These screens also displayed the vehicle’s speed and a map of the route, a handy data set that the team is considering displaying in the final production models.

It gives the user some peace of mind and will help smooth the transition to autonomous vehicles, according to Bateman. But he thinks it won't be long before autonomous riders switch to bingeing Netflix or catching up on emails instead.

Autonomous cabs and cars

Unlike some rivals, such as Waymo or Uber, which have poured millions into creating a profitable driverless ride-hailing service, Nissan is taking a more “Tesla-esque” approach in so much that its autonomous driving research will lead to both driverless mobility solutions and more advanced levels of automation in passenger cars.

While not wanting to completely suck the joy out of driving, Nissan understands that the opportunities to enjoy the open road are rapidly receding and more people are wanting to engage in side tasks while stuck in traffic or tackling the same dull commute.

Its Pro-Pilot and Pro-Pilot 2.0 systems already offer adaptive cruise control and the ability to automatically switch lanes, but it feels like the company has a lot more in its autonomous locker.

“We know customers already appreciate the advanced driver assist features we have at the moment,” says Matthew Ewing, Vice President, Vehicle Engineering, Nissan AMIEO.

“For the next step, we need passengers to have a positive experience inside driverless vehicles. I think building that trust is important,” he says, highlighting the fact that the UK's answer to Japan's Easy Ride service, which is slated to arrive in 2028, could do just that.

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