The challenge for automobile manufacturers - reducing fatal and serious injuries resulting from accidents by fifty percent.

Nissan has set forth a goal to halve the number of fatal and serious injuries from accidents involving Nissan vehicles in Japan by 2015 compared with 1995, and it is promoting initiatives aimed at bringing about a safer driving environment. As a part of these initiatives, Nissan introduced the BR23C robot car last year that incorporates a collision-avoidance system similar to the behavior of bees.

The BR23C avoided obstacles individually but this year, this technology has been further enhanced in the EPORO robot cars to enable them to move in unison as a group. And Nissan demonstrated this capability in their booth at CEATEC JAPAN 2009.

Mimicking the behavior of fish in schools, which do not collide with each other even when swimming close together.

EPORO's drive control mimics the behavior of fish in schools, which do not collide with each other even when swimming close together. Generally speaking, fish change their direction so as not to collide with other fish, forming a school by maintaining a fixed distance with other fish in the vicinity and by moving closer to others if they draw too far away.

Nissan made this drive control possible by using a Laser Rangefinder laser reflector and UWB Communications wireless transmission technologies, and incorporated it into the EPORO. In the demonstration, several EPORO units traveled around a circuit by maintaining a uniform distance between each other and avoided collisions.

The background behind the development of EPORO is Nissan's Safety Shield concept, which is high-level, active safety technology designed to protect people. In the future, Nissan will incorporate EPORO technology into its cars as it has shown to be useful in preventing collisions between vehicles.