Is Land Rover taking autonomy too far?
Jaguar Land Rover has announced it is developing autonomous cars capable of allterrain, off-road driving in any weather conditions. Why? We have no idea. While there would almost certainly be commercial and government applications (military, emergency services, etc) for self-driving off-road technology, surely the vast majority of off-roading done in JLR products would be recreational, which means drivers would rather do it themselves, right?
You know, because that’s the whole point of doing it.
Developing an autonomous off-roader is kind of like developing an autonomous track day car – technically impressive, but entirely pointless.
Apart from being entirely pointless, the project – called ‘‘Cortex’’ – is actually quite interesting, using some very clever tech to create what JLR calls a ‘‘5D’’ technique that combines acoustic, video, radar, light detection and distance sensing (LiDAR) data live in real-time.
According to the company, access to this combined data ‘‘improves the awareness of the environment the car is in’’, while machine-learning enables the self-driving car to behave in an increasingly sophisticated way, allowing it to handle any weather condition on any terrain.
Chris Holmes, Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Research Manager at Jaguar Land Rover, said: ‘‘It’s important that we develop our self-driving vehicles with the same capability and performance customers expect from all Jaguars and Land Rovers.
‘‘Self-driving is an inevitability for the automotive industry and ensuring that our autonomous offering is the most enjoyable, capable and safe is what drives us to explore the boundaries of innovation.’’
The company says the project forms part of its vision to make the self-driving car viable in the widest range of real-life, on- and off-road driving environments and weather.
No doubt the technology will also have applications on the road, as an off-road system that learns from its surroundings and can ‘‘think’’ and react in real time has potentially huge benefits for future autonomous systems on the road.
Although we can’t help but fear its logical conclusion may end up being an autonomous track day Jaguar F-Type, so that we can have absolutely no fun at a race track as well.