NISSAN

Company has developed a new tool to design cars with artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence was once science fiction, but it's here and changing the world as we know it. Nissan is preparing for this new reality, and its Yokohama Lab is exploring how AI can help create the cars of the future.

The company says there is no shortage of potential applications, as “it has become clear that artificial intelligence can be applied in many areas, including research and development, vehicle manufacturing and even design”. Talking about it, the manufacturer noted that AI can play an important role when it comes to aerodynamics, reports Jutarnji.hr.

As the automaker explained, “currently, aerodynamic performance is evaluated by performing repetitive and complex calculations on powerful computers”.

They predict performance and show airflow, but “obtaining more accurate results through simulation requires a large number of complex calculations” and takes hundreds of computers a day to complete. It's far from ideal and Nissan's Kei Akasaka noted that "it's very challenging to respond quickly to sudden requests from designers".

This got Nissan thinking about how to improve things with artificial intelligence. After some initial setbacks, the company spent over a year training and generating data for the AI-powered model.

Even so, the team couldn't get the accuracy they wanted, so they introduced "information such as fluid dynamics equations and other physical laws, in addition to the shape of the car" into the calculation. While this is just a brief overview of the process, the results speak for themselves, as the artificial intelligence was able to “drastically reduce the duration of the simulations by learning the relationship between the shape of the car and its aerodynamic performance based on a large amount of of data”.

The company added that it can now predict a design's aerodynamic performance in seconds instead of days. As well as saving a lot of time, Nissan said the use of AI is likely to lead to "innovative body shapes that strike a better level of balance between design and aerodynamics".

Nissan isn't the only automaker exploring the possibilities of AI, as Audi is using the technology to design the wheels of the future.

Source: Jutarnji.hr