Until recently, Nissan Motor Co. largely kept its research and development close to home in Japan but over the last few years it has branched out, adding R&D sites in China, Russia and Sunnyvale, California, to reflect the company’s growing global markets. In Sunnyvale, Nissan is focusing it’s research on autonomous vehicles – a.k.a. self-driving cars.
Under the direction of NASA veteran Maarten Sierhuis, a growing team of engineers is working on creating autonomous vehicle algorithms focused on increasing safety and productivity. Within the next three years, the company hopes to have successfully developed self-driving cars, plus auto information and entertainment systems requiring web connectivity.