Jaguar Land Rover to develop self drive SUVs
Jaguar Land Rover is developing vehicles that can drive themselves over any terrain as part of a £3.7m project that is exploring the potential for all-weather and all-terrain autonomous vehicle capability.
The CORTEX project is part of the company’s vision to make the self driving vehicle viable in the toughest off road conditions.
CORTEX was funded in the third round of Innovate UK’s funding for Connected and Autonomous Vehicle funding in 2018.
The project will develop technology through algorithm technology, sensor optimisation and actual off-road testing in the UK.
Once developed, this technology will allow the vehicle to view the terrain and then guide it using the appropriate vehicle systems.
When completed it is hoped the project will enable a vehicle to face the harshest conditions of dirt, rain, ice, snow or even fog.
Chris Holmes, connected and autonomous vehicle research manager at Jaguar Land Rover said: “It’s important that we develop our self driving vehicles with the same capacity and performance customers expect from all Jaguars and Land Rovers. Self driving is an inevitability for the automotive industry and ensuring that our autonomous offering is the most enjoyable, capable and safe is what drives us to explore the boundaries of innovation. CORTEX give us the opportunity to work with some fantastic partners whose expertise will help us to realise this vision in the near future.”
One of those partners is the University of Birmingham, whose world leading research expertise in radar and sensing for autonomous platforms, will now be used on the CORTEX project.
