Jaguar Land Rover is trialling driverless pods in Coventry, with the hope of gaining the public’s confidence in self-driving vehicles.

The company’s future mobility division has built the technology to include ‘eyes’ which will monitor people’s behaviour around self-driving cars. The eyes are not employed as sensors on the vehicle but represent the car’s awareness of its surrounding environment and have the ability to fix upon pedestrians and signal when it is safe to cross. The research aims to understand if ‘eyes’ will make the public more confident in the presence of driverless cars, with all findings passed on to psychologists who can analyse the behaviour of those who come into contact with the pods.

“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,” said Pete Bennett, future mobility research manager at JLR.

“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.”

The research is part of the UK government’s UK Autodrive project which is putting autonomous technology into real-life scenarios on the road network. JLR, Ford and Tata Motors are conducting the trials and then sharing their findings in order to speed up the pace of the development.

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