It appears that it’s finally safe to say that summer has arrived. For many, this means taking in the sights and sound of a baseball game. In addition to the action on the field, baseball carries a number of time-honored traditions, and for many, this includes the manual striping of the base lines.
Personally, I’m not one of them, and neither is Nissan. That’s why they recently introduced their Pitch-R robot for applying the lines on baseball, soccer and other athletic fields.
The unit made its first appearance in a Champions League match between the Liverpool and Real Madrid soccer clubs, applying all the necessary field markings in about 20 minutes. The unit is based off of the automaker’s ProPILOT driver-assistance platform. It’s comprised of four cameras, built-in GPS location tracking, and a collision avoidance system – which I guess is in case a rambunctious squirrel or bird gets in the way.
Instead of the chalk I grew up with, the Pitch-R applies a dissolvable white paint that Nissan says is environmentally friendly. The battery-powered robot can be used on gravel, grass, or pavement and can stripe lines even if a playing surface is uneven. Beyond a baseball diamond or soccer pitch, Nissan is looking to level the playing field when it comes to driverless tech. The Pitch-R offers a look into the company’s Intelligent Mobility platform, which is developing driverless vehicle technology.
The bonus is that Nissan can use an application like athletic fields to work out any bugs, eliminating some of the risks that vehicle makers like Tesla have experienced with embedding the autonomous technology into vehicles before the consumer might be ready for them.