Jaguar Land Rover lights up the road ahead for self-driving vehicles of the future

• Intelligent system projects images onto the road ahead to inform pedestrians of direction of travel
• Projections show when the vehicle is preparing to stop, pull away or turn
• The technology helps understand how self-driving vehicles can gain pedestrian trust by communicating their intentions

Coventry, UK, 24 January 2019 – Jaguar Land Rover has developed a system that projects the direction of travel onto the road ahead of self-driving vehicles, to tell other road users what it is going to do next.

The intelligent technology beams a series of projections onto the road to show the future intentions of the vehicle - for example stopping and turning left or right - as part of research into how people can develop their trust in autonomous technology. In the future the projections could even be used to share obstacle detection and journey updates with pedestrians.

These projections, tested on autonomous pods developed by Aurrigo, feature a series of lines or bars with adjustable spacing. The gaps shorten as the pod is preparing to brake before fully compressing at a stop. As the pod moves off and accelerates, the spacing between the lines extends. Upon approaching a turn, the bars fan out left or right to indicate the direction of travel.