常時英心:言葉の森から 1.0

約10年間,はてなダイアリーで英語表現の落穂拾いを行ってきました。現在はAmeba Blogに2.0を開設し,継続中です。こちらはしばらくアーカイブとして維持します。

Jetsons-era plan

3つめのASV関連の記事です。ここのJetsons-era planとはなんじゃいねん。Koyamamotoくん、どうぞ。
なお、あわせて他の表現もマークしておきます(一部、typoがありますが...)。(UG)

A car that never causes an accident. That’s the lofty dream that all auto makers have.

And Nissan Motor Co. is no exception, with the safety-conscious Japanese car maker having set its ultimate goal of having “virtually zero“ accidents with the vehicles it sells.

Among the futuristic ideas the company is cooking up: a steering wheel that doesn’t shake or vibrate even while driving on a bumpy road and a vehicle that swerves on its own to avoid a pedestrian jumping in front of your car.

But what’s surprising is that this isn’t some Jetsons-era plan, the company intends to roll out these technologies out in the near future.

Within a year, Japan’s second biggest car maker by volume will install in its upscale Infiniti-brand vehicles a next-generation steering wheel that controls tire angles by transmitting steering inputs via electronic signals, instead of mechanically, similar to the “fly-by-wire high-tech used in today’s aircraft flight control system.

The advanced system can filter out through electronic control units input from tire vibration signals from rough road surfaces in order to keep the wheel stable and to prevent shaking to improve the vehicle’s handling and safety.

Another innovation is a new collision avoidance system that works by using automatic steering and braking.

Using five laser scanners around the vehicle, two left and right rear radars and a front-mounted radar and camera, once the vehicle equipped with those sensors realizes a risk of an unavoidable collision by just braking — situations like sudden intrusions onto the road in low speed zones or when a collision at high speeds is imminent with the tail end of a traffic jam — the vehicle instantly searches for a zone free from obstacles and with no approaching vehicles from the rear and then emergency steering is applied to guide the vehicle to a safe spot.

Nissan has been working on crash-avoidance technology with its latest innovation expected to be made available in five years.

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/10/17/nissan-eyes-futuristic-tech-to-prevent-accidents/