Self-healing car

A project is underway that will give cars the ability to self-heal electronic faults through intelligent embedded systems and wireless connections to remote support centres.

That is the aim of researchers at Warwick University’s Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (WIMRC), who are working with Jaguar Land Rover and IBM to create the so-called ‘self-healing car’.

Researcher Mark Amor-Segan, an electrical engineer at Warwick, said remote support centres would be alerted to faults with an electronic device and wirelessly send software to fix the problem.

He cited Volvo, which in 2006 recalled thousands of cars in North America to fix a defect in the electronic throttle module that was causing engines to lose power.

The solution, Amor-Segan said, was a simple software download but owners were forced to take their cars to dealerships to have it installed.

He said: ‘If they had the ability to do this remotely through a software download it would have saved millions of dollars.’