Jaguar Land Rover is investing in a research project that will help future autonomous vehicles drive naturally like human drivers, rather than like robots.

A fleet of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles will be driven daily by employees of the London Borough of Greenwich, to establish how a range of different drivers react to real-world driving situations, including heavy traffic, busy junctions, road works and bad weather.

Data from sensors in these cars will reveal the natural driving behaviours and decision-making that drivers make whilst on the road, including complex and stressful scenarios. These include giving way at roundabouts and intersections, how drivers ease forward at junctions to enter a flow of traffic, or how they react to an emergency vehicle coming up behind their car whilst in a traffic jam.

The three-year, £5.5m ‘MOVE-UK’ project will also use this data to help develop insurance policies for future autonomous cars. Insurance experts will provide their expertise on the liability of certain scenarios using the real-world driving data supplied by the fleet of test cars.

Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills today announced the UK Government’s support for the MOVE-UK research with a £2.75 million grant from the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK. This funding for collaborative research is part of the Government’s £100m Connected and Autonomous Vehicles fund.

“To successfully introduce autonomous cars, we actually need to focus more on the driver than ever before,” said Dr Wolfgang Epple, Director of Research and Technology, Jaguar Land Rover. “Understanding how drivers react to a range of very dynamic and random situations in the real world is essential if we want drivers to embrace autonomous cars in the future.”

Drivers will need to completely trust the vehicle before they opt in and engage automated systems. If an autonomous car can be programmed to have a very similar reaction to a real driver, then the autonomous experience will be more natural, and the driver more likely to allow the car to take control.  

“Customers are much more likely to accept highly-automated and fully autonomous vehicles if the car reacts in the same way as the driver. By understanding and measuring positive driving behaviours we can ensure that an autonomous Jaguar or Land Rover of the future will not simply perform a robotic function,” said Dr Epple.

“Ultimately we want to be able to give drivers the choice of an engaged or autonomous drive.  If drivers have confidence in the automation they will seamlessly flick from one mode to the other. Autonomous mode will help with any challenging, or less stimulating activities on the journey, like parking or driving in heavy traffic. If this automated experience feels natural and safe, the driver will be able to genuinely relax and will be happy to let the car take control.”

The MOVE-UK consortium is led by Bosch and includes Jaguar Land Rover, Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), Direct Line, the London Borough of Greenwich and The Floow.