by Nick Summers | @nisummers | February 13th 2015 at 8:35 am

The future of driverless cars is being shaped by a modified LandRover

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There's no single blueprint for building a self‐driving car. Certain components have becomestandard fare, such as laser‐powered LIDAR sensors, but there's no definitive design just yet.We've seen some polished prototypes already, including the Lutz Pathfinder pod and

Google's bubbly little motor, but most companies are still experimenting. As such, it'spointless for them to design and build a beautifully arched bonnet if, after a few test drives,engineers decide the front grille camera would be better placed on the roof.

In Bristol, a group of companies called the Venturer Consortium is planning the UK's firstindependent test site for driverless car technologies. The team, which includes Atkins, FusionProcessing and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, are using a BAE‐modified Bowler Wildcat, amonstrous off‐road vehicle based on a Land Rover Defender. The engine can be heardgrowling across the car park, the front bumper is littered with sensors and the windscreen iscovered in a thin layer of dust and dirt. This is a workhorse, plain and simple. It's built fortesting purposes, not attracting customers in a glossy showroom.

The car is already fully autonomous and equipped with a remote kill switch, but the idea isthat interested parties will come in and tinker with its design. There are multiple sensormounting points at the front and on the roof, making it easy for researchers to experimentwith different hardware combinations. At the moment, a Velodyne LIDAR sensor sits proudlyon top, with 64 lasers shooting out in every direction. It works in a similar manner to radar,using the time it takes for the lasers to bounce back to the sensor to map out itssurroundings. A 360‐degree mounted camera on the bonnet feeds even more visual data intothe computer, helping the car stay on course and read important road signs.

But 12 months from now, the Wildcat's configuration could be completely different. "Some ofthe lasers here don't work particularly well in rainy conditions and fog ‐‐ which is quitecommon in the UK ‐‐ so we're looking to produce radar and camera systems which can copewith these situations," Antony Waldock, Technology Lead for Information Processing at BAEsays. The vehicle's software has been created with tinkering in mind, allowing new sensorsand types of data to be easily patched into the stock hardware.

The plan is to test the modified Wildcat on private and public roads from early 2016.However, the focus of the project isn't to develop autonomous car systems in isolation. TheVenturer Consortium is also tasked with looking at the legal and insurance aspects ofdriverless cars, as well as public reaction and perception. The UK government has givenresearchers the go‐ahead for supervised road testing, but amended traffic laws aren'texpected until at least 2017. Once they're in place, the group will use a simulator ‐‐ notDigiCar, but a bespoke alternative designed by Williams Advanced Engineering ‐‐ alongsidethe Bowler Wildcat to work out the best driverless setup that complies.

GALLERY | 9 PHOTOSBowler Wildcat

Similar to TRL's work with the DigiCar simulator though, it's the human‐machine interactionthat could pose some of the most difficult challenges. Professor Graham Parkhurst, Director atthe Centre for Transport and Society at UWE, is planning surveys, focus groups and,ultimately, driverless car trials to better understand people's behaviour, reactions andconcerns. For instance, on the road many drivers use non‐verbal methods of communicationwith one another, like a quick wave, eye contact, or a flash of their car's headlights. If self‐driving vehicles are unable to recreate or read those signals, they'll need to abide by specialrules, such as making sure they give cyclists a wider berth.

"We can solve these problems but society has to be convinced ‐‐ it has to believe there arereal benefits," Parkhurst says. "The job I've got within this project is to really test what the

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public expects from these vehicles and how they're going to improve people's lives."

The modified Bowler Wildcat isn't the driverless car of the future. But the experiments that itcan facilitate, combined with a new test site, will propel the development of commercialautonomous vehicles. Supplement that with deep research into the legal and insurance issues,and the UK will be well on its way to making driverless cars a consumer reality.

The Bowler Wildcat is just one of three driverless car projects we looked at this week. Check outpart one and part three in our mini‐series.

Bowler wildcat, driverless, driverless car, Driverless Cars, self‐driving, self‐driving car, uk‐featureTAGS:

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In a 100 years in the U.S. it will be illegal to drive a car yourself, or require a license that'sprohibitively expensive and similar to the requirements to fly a jetliner today.  This willvirtually eliminate one of the top 10 causes of death.  Now, if we could just cure cancer. http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/country‐health‐profile/united‐states

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Jason on the reflect.

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