Autonomous and connected vehicle technology trialled on the streets of Milton Keynes

In the UK’s largest trial of connected and autonomous vehicle technology a consortium including Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, Tata and Arup have this week (Thursday 22nd March) demonstrated a range of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies on the streets of Milton Keynes.

The UK Autodrive project, which is being led by Arup, has been using public roads and car parks in the Buckinghamshire “new town”, famed for its grid system of roads, to explore how connected and autonomous vehicles could reduce congestion and improve safety on the UK’s roads.

Centrepiece of the latest trials - which The Engineer experienced first-hand - is Jaguar Land Rover’s latest self-driving vehicle technology, a Prototype Range Rover sport capable of Level 4 autonomy, meaning it’s theoretically able to perform all safety-critical driving functions.

JLR autonomous vehicle research engineer Jim O'Donoghue told The Engineer that the vehicle - which is equipped with a mix of lidar, radar and cameras and has been programmed to follow a pre-mapped route - has performed well in “the wild”, and dealt effectively with the unpredictability of a real-life traffic environment.