As long as humans travel on asphalt, potholes will be present during their commutes, holiday trip or random supermarket runs. But if the authorities don't mind fixing potholes, Jaguar Land Rover offers a new approach: detecting and avoiding them.
Nobody likes potholes, except for repair shop owners. But when it comes to driving your beloved car through these daily nuisances, we all know that the sustained slalom will make even the calmest driver go insane. Not to mention if you're unlucky enough to hit one.
But have no fear, Jaguar Land Rover is researching a new connected car technology that will allow a vehicle to identify the location and the level of hazard of potholes, broken drains and manhole covers.
Even more, the system will share the info it collected with other vehicles via cloud computing, but also with authorities, which hopefully will help road maintenance teams prioritize repairs. Just think about a car receiving a warning from another vehicle, and the driver of the notified car would have enough time to brake, stop the car or avoid the pothole.
“Ultimately, sensing the road ahead and assessing hazards is a key building block on our journey to the autonomous car. In the future, we are looking to develop systems that could automatically guide a car around potholes without the car leaving its lane and causing a danger to other drivers," explained Mike Bell, Global Connected Car Director, Jaguar Land Rover. "If the pothole hazard was significant enough, safety systems could slow or even stop the car to minimize the impact. This could all help make future autonomous driving a safe and enjoyable reality.”
There's a video below illustrating the Pothole Alert system, so make sure you check it out.
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