The UK’s largest trial to date of connected and autonomous vehicle technology has moved onto public roads, with the Arup-led consortium, UK Autodrive, starting in-city trials on the streets of central Coventry.
Project partners Jaguar Land Rover, Ford and Tata Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC) have begun to collaboratively trial a number of connected car features in the city, with Jaguar Land Rover and TMETC also separately trialling their autonomous research vehicle technologies.
The connected car trials are exploring the benefits of having cars that can “talk” to each other and their surroundings – with connected traffic lights, emergency vehicle warnings and emergency braking alerts among the technologies being trialled (see full list of UK Autodrive connected car use cases below).
The Jaguar Land Rover and TMETC autonomous vehicle research technology trials are being used to develop self-driving vehicle technology in a real-world setting, but with highly trained test operators supervising the cars at all times.
Further trials are scheduled to take place in Coventry and Milton Keynes early next year followed by a final series of open road demonstration events in both cities during the second half of 2018.