Jaguar Land Rover is demonstrating its new Range Rover Sport with autonomous driving technology for the first time at the Horiba test centre, Nuneaton. It will bring together JLR's portfolio of urban self-driving technologies.
It is equipped with up to Level-4 self-driving technology, which means it can drive itself but needs to have a human being behind the wheel. It can negotiate roundabouts and junctions, and respond to traffic lights in a simulated urban road network.
JLR had previously demonstrated Level-2 and Level-3 self-driving technology. However, the ultimate in self-driving is Level -5, where the car can drive itself to a parking location or back to pick up passengers without help from a human driver.
Many other autonomous and connected vehicle technologies will also be demonstrated at the Horiba facility, including Emergency Vehicle Warning, Intersection Collision Warning (ICW) and In-Vehicle Signage (IVS). Some of these features would require roadside technology boxes to be installed for relaying real-time driving information as part of a flow of car-to-car information.
The ICW can warn the driver if a junction has high traffic and risk of collision. IVS is likely to replace in-car cameras in the near future since it ensures more reliable data transmission.
The project to bring innovation in autonomous driving technology and more self-driving cars to British roads is initiated by UK Autodrive, a public-private consortium.