In an effort to garner the public’s trust with self-driving cars, Jaguar Land Rover has developed a system that allows autonomous vehicles to project their direction of travel onto the road. This lets other drivers and pedestrians know exactly where the car will go next.
During tests using Aurrigo-developed autonomous pods on a fabricated street scene, the vehicles beamed a series of horizontal lines that adjusted their spacing depending on the intent. For example, while the car was stopped, the lines were fully compressed. But once it stepped on the gas, the lines extended their spacing, and curved to either the left or right if the car approached a turn.
(Image Source: Jaguar Land Rover)
The technology is part of a trust trial program that implores the connections between people and autonomous cars, which is part of Jaguar Land Rover’s government-supported UK Autodrive project.
Back in August 2018, the program was testing self-driving pods donning a pair of virtual eyes. In experiments, autonomous intelligent pods wait for pedestrians to cross on a simulated street scenario. The eyes appear to “look” at the pedestrian passing by, which conveys the vehicle’s intentions that’ll it wait for them to cross before it continues driving.
Whether its virtual eyes or beamed projections, each tech has safety and consumer trust at the forefront.
“The trials are about understanding how much information a self-driving vehicle should share with a pedestrian to gain their trust. Just like any new technology, humans have to learn to trust it, and when it comes to autonomous vehicles, pedestrians must have confidence they can cross the road safely. This pioneering research is forming the basis of ongoing development into how self-driving cars will interact with people in the future,” Jaguar Land Rover’s Future Mobility Research Manager Pete Bennett says.
