The vehicles in use are Land Rover's Discovery Sport and Range Rover, while Jaguar has p[ut forth its F-PACE.
The tests on public roads are part of a £7.1mil (RM37.5mil) project aimed at creating the UK’s first fully connected infrastructure geared towards self-driving cars.
More than 64km of the UK's motorways - the M40, M42, A45 and A46 will benefit from a world-first combination of wireless technologies (DSRC, 3/4G mobile networks, WiFi and fibre optic networks), ensuring vehicles can always be connected to each other and to the infrastructure.
Connecting cars to each other and their surroundings (known as V2X) is a vital step for safe, large-scale deployment of self-driving cars.
The latest connected technology complements other vehicle sensors and extends a vehicle's ability to ‘see’ further down the road and ‘speak’ to other vehicles, infrastructure, pedestrians and the network.
For instance, it can warn that a car too far ahead to see has applied its brakes and can allow a following driver to avoid a potential accident.
The system will work on both manual and autonomous driving to help greatly improve road safety across the varied levels of autonomy.
The company will be trialling a range of intelligent connected features such as emergency electronic brake light warning (EEBL), emergency vehicle warning (EVW), and in-vehicle signage (IVS) for roadworks warning (RWW) and traffic condition warning (TCW).
This project forms part of the company’s vision to leverage connectivity as a segue to making the self-driving car viable in the widest range of real-life, on- and off-road driving conditions.
“To realise the full benefit of self-driving cars, we need to understand the infrastructure that’s required to support them. Connectivity not only takes us a step closer to making self-driving cars a reality but it also creates the platform to bring more connected safety features to our customers within the next few years," said Jaguar Land Rover connectivity manager Colin Lee.
