Road tests for self-driving Jaguar Land Rovers

The first road tests for autonomous and connected vehicles in the United Kingdom includes Jaguar Land Rover.

It’s testing a range of research technologies allowing cars to talk to each other as well as roadside infrastructure, such as traffic lights on the roads of Coventry as part of the £20 million (NZ$38.5m) UK Autodrive project,

The trials will explore how future connected and autonomous vehicles can replicate human behaviour and reactions when driving.

Jaguar Land Rover is developing both fully and semi-autonomous vehicle technologies to offer customers a choice of an engaged or autonomous drive.

“Testing this self-driving project on public roads is so exciting, as the complexity of the environment allows us to find robust ways to increase road safety in the future,” Jaguar Land Rover product engineering executive director Nick Rogers says.

“By using inputs from multiple sensors, and finding intelligent ways to process this data, we are gaining accurate technical insight to pioneer the automotive application of these technologies.”

Rogers says Jaguar Land Rover is supporting innovative research that will be integral to the infrastructure, technology and legal landscape needed to make intelligent, self-driving vehicles a reality within the next decade.

Coventry joins just 12 other cities in doing such tests on public roads globally.

UK Autodrive is the largest of three consortia launched to support the introduction of self-driving vehicles there.

The trials will continue into 2018.