Nissan has shown Pitch-R, a fully autonomous robot capable of quickly drawing football/soccer field layouts for the specified game parameters. The demonstration took place during the UEFA Champions’ League Final 2018 in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The modestly-sized drone comes equipped with four cameras for 360-degree field of view, a GPS receiver and a collision prevention system. It can paint the complete layout of a football or soccer field for 5, 7 or 11 players per team, including the center, the goal areas, the penalty areas, and the corners.
The entire process only takes 20 minutes. The paint applied is harmless to the grass and the environment as a whole. Apart from grass, the drone can perform the same task on a gravel, asphalt, or rubber floor.
According to Nissan, the Pitch-R became possible thanks to the ProPilot semi-autonomous car driving system the company is working upon. At its core is a laser scanner that calculates exact distance to the nearby objects and an array of cameras that help it evade obstacles and correct its course. Acceleration, deceleration and lane control are all managed electronically.
Nissan would hardly even consider coming out with an invention like this without the proper tech to power it, so we can assume the development is at its later stages.
The ProPilot system was first featured in the all-electric Nissan Leaf.
Photo: pocket-lint.comÂ