Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Consortium Demonstrates Latest Innovations at Jaguar Land Rover
Leading Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Consortium Demonstrates Latest Innovations at Jaguar Land Rover’s Gaydon Track
UK Connected Intelligence Transport Environment (UK CITE), a project to create the most advanced environment for testing connected and autonomous vehicles, demonstrated its latest innovations earlier today (Thursday, April 12) at Jaguar Land Rover’s Gaydon site.
The UK CITE project will create the UK’s first fully connected infrastructure, using a globally unique combination of wireless technologies, which can enable real-world testing in a safe and managed way. The project is funded by the Government’s £100m Connected and Autonomous Vehicle fund, delivered by Innovate UK. The project is worth a total of £7.1m including investment from the Government and Highways England.
The event displayed the technological advances made by the consortium to key partners, covering stakeholders from the automotive industry, technology and infrastructure providers and operators, and academia.
The talking car technologies demonstrated were the consortium’s Emergency Vehicle Warning (EVW), Emergency Electronic Brake Light (EEBL), Road Works Warning (RWW) and Traffic Condition Warning (TCW). These connected technologies allow cars to communicate with each other and the road infrastructure, providing intelligent insight on road conditions.
All of the technologies demonstrated at Gaydon provide advanced warning to the driver. This intelligent insight in to road conditions is a key benefit to Connected Vehicles, whether manned or autonomous. For instance, advanced warning that a car in front of you has applied its brakes, with no line of sight, offers obvious advantages to the user who can anticipate the need to alter their driving and avoid any potential accident.
Claire Lewis, Senior Business Development Manager at lead consortium partner, Visteon– responsible for the overall technical architecture of the project, including multi-path connected car hardware and software and a smartphone application – said:
“We have made significant strides with the development of our Phase 1 technologies and this event provided a great opportunity for us to demonstrate the full functionality of these innovations to our key partners.
“These technologies are set to have a wide societal and infrastructural impact. With advanced warnings of Emergency Vehicles on the road response times will improve, as traffic proactively responds to their presence. In the same vein, a more informed understanding of road conditions will allow traffic pressures to ease on the road.”
Chris Holmes, Connected and Autonomous Car and Chassis Research, Senior Manager, Jaguar Land Rover, said:
“We are proud to be part of the consortium pushing the UK automotive industry forward as a global leader, truly innovating in the field of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.
“The technologies demonstrated by UK CITE will significantly help drivers and autonomous cars of the future understand unseen road hazards. Being at the forefront of developing these emerging technologies is something we take very seriously to provide safe and capable vehicles of the future”
Chris Holmes, Connected and Autonomous Car and Chassis Research, Senior Manager, Jaguar Land Rover, said:
“We’ve been working with our UK CITE partners to install the infrastructure needed to help vehicles communicate with each other and the environment around them. Safety is our top priority and the safety of road users will continue to be an integral part of this project, especially during any on-road testing of this emerging technology.”
“During the Year of Engineering, this is an exciting technology-led project to be working on and shows how rewarding and varied a career in the highways industry can be.”
