Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced plans to develop an autonomous vehicle test bed in Ireland and will use its fully electric I-Pace to trial the route.
At the Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI), JLR will partner with Cisco, Seagate Renovo, Red Hat, Valeo and Mergon to test both driverless cars and drones in a smart city environment to see how they interact with other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.
FMCI will be spread across seven miles of public roads around Limerick and provide a range of road environments and traffic scenarios to trial new technologies.
It will feature smart junctions, connected roads, autonomous parking and EV charging points. There will also be a connected highway and a managed air-traffic corridor for unmanned aerial vehicles from Shannon airport along the estuary.
Russell Vickers, CEO of FMCI, said: “The smart city zone provides a first-class facility for global companies to work together and develop world-leading technology, from autonomous vehicles to connected infrastructure.
“The testbed provides an opportunity to test in the real world and help answer some of the questions posed by the future of mobility in a collaborative and efficient way.”
Furthermore, FMCI will include a range of sensors, location systems, and a control centre enabling data to be collated. This will advance JLR’s research into CAVs, electric and shared vehicles.
