Jaguar Land Rover: closer to the autonomous car through a "connected" route

Jaguar Land Rover tests “intelligent” vehicles on a connected route in the United Kingdom.

Jaguar Land Rover is benefiting from £7.1 million invested to create the first fully connected infrastructure in the United Kingdom, as well as carrying out future-focused tests for the autonomous car of the future.

More than 40 miles of the M40, M42, A45 and A46 will benefit from the first combination of state-of-the-art wireless technologies (DSRC, 3G/4G mobile lines, WiFi and fibre-optic networks) to ensure that the vehicles are always connected to each other and to the adjacent infrastructure.

These vehicles will be equipped with sensors that will interconnect with those on these “intelligent” roads, thus enhancing safety and the quality of the journey.Jaguar Land Rover knows that connecting vehicles to each other and to their surroundings is essential for achieving the autonomous car of the future, or at least, that seems to be the technology that will be used to achieve it.

Another function provided by this interconnection is the possibility for “intelligent” cars to communicate with each other along the route. This will bring very interesting advantages, as it will give these vehicles the ability to communicate in the background to know their location more precisely, or to know when they are braking or not, apart from, of course, the use of their external sensors.

Thanks to these connected roads, these autonomous vehicles will be able to have a much more advanced safety system than the current one, anticipating risk situations such as, for example, a pedestrian crossing without the car’s sensors being able to detect them because their field of vision is blocked. Here the rest of the road’s sensors, or the information from these connected cars that will provide the vehicle’s central computer in this case, would come into action.

If you are interested in learning more about advances towards the autonomous car, here is an interesting article about very similar tests that Renault is carrying out on another “connected” route:

Renault Zoe: First autonomous and electric rental car in Europe