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Nissan, which has been making more than a little noise about its efforts in the robotic car sphere lately, has introduced a new concept for self-driving cars - Intelligent Vehicle Towing, or IVT at its Oppama factory in Japan.
Basically, it's a series of autonomous Nissan Leafs, which like a robotic caravan club member, are experts at towing. They tow small trailers carrying finished vehicles (the plant makes both the Leaf and the Juke) around the factory to storage yards. The software and sensors fitted allow them to navigate a pre-set route, stopping if an obstacle is detected and can even decide on a right-of-way if two towing Leafs meet at an intersection.
The tech was introduced last year in a pilot project and now more than 1,600 successful towing journeys have been made. Quite apart from the obvious staffing benefits, the real upside is that where other factories need expensive permanent rail systems to be installed for this kind of work, the Leafs can use the existing road and path network of the factory, which makes them more flexible and makes the factory itself more flexible too, as it can grow without worrying about installing such systems.
Nissan says it will continue to test the system at its Oppama Plant, and will examine the possibility of implementation at other manufacturing facilities both in and outside Japan and the knowledge gained from running the system will feed directly back into autonomous vehicle testing for customers.