Road accident news
09/10/2009

Robot fish technology may reduce road accidents

Tiny robots which mimic the behaviour of a shoal of fish demonstrate the latest technology being developed by Nissan to reduce road accidents.

As part of its car crash avoidance system, the Japanese manufacturer says the EPORO three-wheeled robots can move together as a group of up to seven without bumping into one another – just like fish - bringing forward the possibility of the technology's use in helping drivers minimise vehicle accidents.

EPOROs, an abbreviation of EPisode O (Zero) Robot (Episode aiming to be CO2-free and accident-free) has three rules of fish behaviour applied to its driving control: collision avoidance, travelling side-by-side and approaching.

Generically, fish recognise their surroundings based on lateral-line sense and sense of sight – in the EPORO, a laser range finder is used for lateral-line sense, while other communications technology is utilised for the sense of sight.

According to Nissan, this is the world's first development of a robot car which can travel in a group by sharing the position and information of others within a group via communication technologies.

The 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 while Nissan's ongoing research aims at creating collision-free vehicles based on its safety concept "Safety Shield" with the consequent outcome of cutting road accidents.