Biomimetic Car Robot Drive

What better way to advance the development of crash prevention technology than to mimic some of the best proponents of collision avoidance in the natural world? Bees. In a surprising project that will be unveiled at CEATEC, the humble bumblebee has given engineers at Nissan Motor Co.'s Advanced Technology Center a strategic hint at how to design the next generation of crash-avoidance systems. Based on joint research with the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at Japan's prestigious University of Tokyo, Nissan has built the Biomimetic Car Robot Drive, or BR23C. It is a robotic micro-car that recreates bee characteristics with the goal of producing a system that prevents collisions altogether.

BR23C is one of many new safety technologies that Nissan is working as part of its 'Safety Shield' concept – an advanced, proactive approach to safety issues based on the idea that cars should help protect people. The approach classifies driving risks and accidents into six stages. It is Nissan's goal to halve the number of automobile accident fatalities or serious injuries involving its vehicles by 2015 compared to 1995. SAFETY SHIELD -- Nissan's concept of "the vehicle that helps protect people "In flight, each bee creates its own oval-shaped personal space which in fact closely resembles Nissan's Safety Shield concept. But more crucially, it is the bee's compound eyes, capable of seeing more than 300-degrees that allow the bumblebee to fly uninterrupted inside its personal space. In order to recreate the function of a compound eye, engineers came up with the idea of a Laser Range Finder (LRF). The LRF detects obstacles up to two meters away within a 180-degree radius in front of the BR23C, calculates the distance to them, and sends a signal to an on-board microprocessor, which is instantly translated into collision avoidance. The biggest difference to any current system is that the avoidance maneuver is totally instinctive. If that was not so, then the car robot would not be able to react fast enough to avoid obstacles. But unlike a bee, it cannot deviate upwards or downwards or diagonally, only in two dimensions and only in the direction that the wheels can turn. This device only needs to process inputs every few seconds, and act on that. It does not require a huge central processing unit to run complicated programs or a large memory to store enormous data from previous maneuvers. It can operate continuously using an extremely simple microprocessor. This research might have only just begun with the biomimetic car robot, but this bee-inspired technology has taken the next big step in creating technologies that may help one day lead to a collision-free future.

Unfortunately these systems are expensive, but if these systems are chipped in future will be installed in all cars.

Glossary

Crash sensors (n)-датчики аварии

Detect (v)-улавливать

Lidar ( n)- лазерный дальномер

Endow (v) – наделять

Unveil (v) - представить

Collision (n)- столкновение

Whiplash injury (n) - травма шеи, позвоночника

Pedestrian (n)- пешеход

Maneuver (v)-манипулировать

Superfluous (a)- ненужный

Windscreen (n) - лобовое стекло

Redundant (a)- резервный

Required (a) - требуемый, необходимый.

Imminent(a) - угрожающий