Nissan unveils pitch drawing robot at Champions League Final
Are the days of the park keeper drawing wobbly white lines to mark out the local pitches after having a few too many the night before finally over?
At the UEFA Champion’s League Final in Kiev at the weekend, Nissan unveiled an intelligent autonomous robot which can draw football pitches wherever it finds space.
Named Pitch-R, the robot is inspired by Nissan’s advanced ProPILOT driver assistance technology which is found on the all electric Nissan LEAF as well as the Nissan Qashqai.
Featuring a four-camera vision system, GPS location tracking and collision avoidance system, it can draw white lines on grass, tarmac or gravel with eco-friendly dissolvable paint.
Pitch-R is powered by a rechargeable battery pack. Once activated, it moves autonomously to analyze its surroundings in real time and quickly scan to find a suitable space. Uneven surfaces do not present a problem for Pitch-R, and it can navigate around obstacles.
Pitch-R can create pitches for five-a-side, seven-a-side or 11-a-side teams. What’s more the whole process can take less than 20 minutes!
Says Roel De Vries, Nissan’s corporate vice president for marketing and brand strategy:
“The UEFA Champions League may feature the best footballers in the world, but all those star players started out like every kid – using jumpers for goalposts and chalk to mark lines wherever they could find open space to play the game they love.”
