Automaker Nissan has enlisted the help of anthropologists and professionals of various disciplines including experts on sensor technology and artificial intelligence (AI), computer scientists, and automobile and software engineers, to help design autonomous vehicles.

Anthropologist? Melissa Cefkin, who is the principal scientist and design anthropologist at the Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, ?is tasked with analysing human driving interactions to ensure the autonomous vehicle is prepared to be a ‘good citizen’ on the road.

Cefkin said: “Car technology is continuing to evolve and change. And now…we’re adding this autonomous dimension to it…that will bring around further changes in society, all the way down to the everyday way in which we interact and behave on the road.”

"Cefkin and her team are taking a fresh look at how humans interact with an automobile? to gain insights into how new technologies might interpret or act on those behaviours."

Cefkin and her team are taking a fresh look at how humans interact with an automobile? to gain insights into how new technologies might interpret or act on those behaviours.

The team is focused on the third milestone in Nissan’s autonomous vehicle programme, which is ?development of the capability for the vehicle to navigate city driving and intersections without driver intervention.

This system is expected to be introduced in 2020, following the release in July 2016 of the first of Nissan’s autonomous drive technologies known as ProPILOT.

ProPILOT is an autonomous drive technology designed for highway use in single-lane traffic, and a multiple-lane application that can autonomously negotiate hazards and change lanes during highway driving.

Last March, Cefkin and her team have documented not just interactions in the city involving drivers, but also those between vehicles and pedestrians, cyclists and road features.