Industry and academia will work together to develop fully autonomous cars in the UK following launch of an £11M research programme by Jaguar Land Rover and the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.

 

Five projects have secured funding under the ‘Towards Autonomy - Smart and Connected Control’ programme, with research due to take place at ten UK universities and the Transport Research Laboratory. The winners were announced on Friday by Business Secretary Sajid Javid.

 

The car manufacturer's director of research and technology Dr Wolfgang Epple said: “To realise the future potential for fully autonomous vehicles, we need to give drivers, pedestrians and other road users the confidence that a car driving around with little or no human input is a safe, viable and rewarding experience.

 

“These collaborative projects will bring some of the UK's leading academics together with our autonomous driving team to address the fundamental real world challenges that are part of our journey towards autonomous driving.”

 

Research will look into topics including the transition between human control and automated systems; use of radar and video sensing to interpret the external environment; and how data from intelligent infrastructure, drivers and automated vehicles can be used to aid interaction.

 

One project led by Professor Neville Stanton of the University of Southampton aims to explore how drivers will react to new autonomous systems. Professor Stanton said: “The largest gap in our understanding of vehicle automation is how drivers will react to this new technology and how best to design the driver-automation interaction.

 

“This project will answer these questions by studying a wide range of drivers with different driving experiences in simulators, or test tracks and in road going vehicles.”

 

(Photo: University of Southampton)