WMG at the University of Warwick is to work with Jaguar Land Rover in a key part of a £4.7 million project called AutopleX which will develop vehicles that can ‘see’ around corners and through obstacles, enhancing the capability of self-driving cars.

Jaguar Land Rover is leading AutopleX project to investigate pioneering safety technology for self-driving technology The Innovate UK funded project combines connected, automated and live mapping tech to allow self-driving cars to ‘see’ and ‘talk’ to each other and it brings together Jaguar Land Rover with WMG at the University of Warwick and Highways England, INRIX, Ricardo, Siemens, and Transport for West Midlands.

WMG will bring scientific expertise in the area of connected autonomous driving systems, V2X systems, physical and virtual validation, and cyber security. Using their unique vehicle simulation facilities they will work with partners to create insight prior to physical tests as well as post trial impact assessment in various scenarios that cannot be carried out in physical test due to the environmental restrictions. WMG will also advise the project team on cyber security aspects and will continuously assess resilience of the AutopleX systems against potential cyber-attacks.

Professor Mehrdad Dianati who will lead WMG’s work on the project said:

"While tremendous progresses have been made in development of autonomous driving systems, enabling autonomous vehicles to safely operate in complex environments is a crucial challenge toward realisation of fully autonomous cars. One promising paradigm is to augment vehicles on-board system through V2X technologies. AutopleX has an ambitious vision to address practical challenges of such approaches through real-world test as well as understanding their impacts on the vehicle function and road networks through virtual evaluations.”

Chris Holmes, Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Research Manager at Jaguar Land Rover said:“This project is a crucial step in bringing self-driving cars to our customers in the near future. Together with our AutopleX partners, we will merge our connected and autonomous research to empower our self-driving vehicles to operate safely in the most challenging, real-world traffic situations. This project will ensure that we will deliver the most sophisticated and capable automated driving technology.”

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