Nissan's 2027 self-driving tech promises to be more 'human-like' than ever

Nissan’s next-generation Propilot autonomous driving technology is going to feature something called 'Ground Truth Perception' capabilities. Shut the front door – or better still, swerve it if one is inexplicably flying right at you, because that's what this weirdly labelled tech enables.

Granted, 'Emergency Immediate Danger Avoidance' hasn't got a better ring to it either. Anyway, it's all about responding to an unexpected turn of events on the road in front. In combination with super-sophisticated LiDar and Wayve AI Driver software, cars fitted with Propilot will able to ‘see’ further up the road and if something dramatic happens, take immediate action to avoid a potential collision.

How? It's all about The Made-up Cleverness, aka AI. Nissan's integrated a very comprehensively modelled GenAI engine from Wayve (a company that focuses on nothing but AI in driving). The engine has digested Jabba-the-Hutt-sized buckets of data, modelled a bazillion and one virtual scenarios, and created a repository of pre-determined decisions so nuanced, Wayve says it makes the car's real-time reactions 'human-like'.

Whether the car in front loses control, clips someone else, or an oncoming truck loses a tyre that takes flight in your direction, the suite of highly perceptive sensors – including a front camera, front radar, LiDar, four side radars, nine surrounding cameras and two long-range rear radars – will in that moment, understand the danger and respond immediately to avoid any damage. Impressive.

Automatic lane changes, i.e. getting out of the way of potential catastrophe, or hard braking to stop before getting in the way of any potential catastrophe are a couple of defensive manoeuvres the system is capable of. If it can guarantee no lag, understandably, the Japanese carmaker reckons this tech will ‘set a new standard’ for self-driving. More as we get it.