WATCH: Jaguar Land Rover tests trust in autonomous cars with Virtual Eyes
Jaguar Land Rover has come up with a big-eyed autonomous pod to encourage pedestrians to have trust in self-driving vehicles.
The googly-eyed vehicle is designed to 'look' directly at pedestrians at road crossings so they can be confident that the machine knows they are there and won't run them over.
Fitting the 'virtual eyes' on autonomous intelligent pods is the result of detailed research Jaguar Land Rover has been carrying out with cognitive psychologists on a number of projects to try and understand how people can develop more trust in self driving vehicles.
It comes after research showed that up to 63 per cent of pedestrians and cyclists worry about how safe it will be to share the road with self-driving vehicles in the future.
WATCH the pods in action:
The friendly-faced ‘eye pods’ have a vital job: helping work out how much information future self-driving cars should share with users or pedestrians to ensure that people trust the technology.
The latest trust trials form part of the West Midlands-based luxury car maker’s government-supported UK Autodrive project.
The intelligent pods, run autonomously on a fabricated street scene in Coventry, while the behaviour of pedestrians is analysed as they wait to cross the road.
The ‘eyes’ have been devised by a team of advanced engineers, working in Jaguar Land Rover’s Future Mobility division.
The pods seek out the pedestrian – appearing to ‘look’ directly at them – signalling to road users that it has identified them, and intends to take avoiding action.
Pete Bennett, future mobility research manager at Jaguar Land Rover, said: “It’s second-nature to glance at the driver of the approaching vehicle before stepping into the road. Understanding how this translates in tomorrow’s more automated world is important.
“We want to know if it is beneficial to provide humans with information about a vehicle’s intentions or whether simply letting a pedestrian know it has been recognised is enough to improve confidence.”
During the tests engineers record trust levels in the person before and after the pod makes ‘eye contact’ to find out whether it generates sufficient confidence that it would stop for them.
Safety remains the number one priority as Jaguar Land Rover invests in self-driving technology, becoming automotive leaders in autonomous, connected, electric and shared mobility.
The trial is aligned with the brand’s long-term strategic goals: to make cars safer, free up people’s valuable time and improve mobility for everyone.
The trials are part of a wider study exploring how future connected and autonomous vehicles can replicate human behaviour and reactions when driving.
As part of the study, more than 500 test subjects have been studied interacting with the self-driving pods, designed by UK Autodrive partner Aurrigo, part of Coventry-based RDM Group.
