Your move

Jaguar Land Rover is experimenting with a new way to help pedestrians trust autonomous cars: projecting the planned direction of travel onto the road so humans can see whether the vehicle is planning to pull away, turn or stop.

The company is testing the system on self-driving pods developed by British automaker Aurrigo, as part of an ongoing experiment to help pedestrians feel more comfortable sharing space with autonomous vehicles.

To indicate their intentions, each pod beams a series of bars onto the road ahead. The bars move closer together as the pod slows down, and compress completely as it stops. When the pod is about to turn, the bars fan out to the left or right.

Eyes ahead

Jaguar Land Rover's Future Mobility division is working to build trust after research revealed that 41% of drivers and pedestrians don't feel safe sharing the streets with autonomous cars.

Last year, the company tried attaching googly eyes to its autonomous pods, enabling them to make eye contact with pedestrians to acknowledge that they've been seen.

Jaguar Land Rover autonomous pod

”The trials are about understanding how much information a self-driving vehicle should share with a pedestrian to gain their trust,” said Pete Bennett, Future Mobility research manager at Jaguar Land Rover.

”Just like any new technology, humans have to learn to trust it, and when it comes to autonomous vehicles, pedestrians must have confidence they can cross the road safely. This pioneering research is forming the basis of ongoing development into how self-driving cars will interact with people in the future.”



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Samsung Electronics' Auto Exynos V9 has eight A76 cores and will power Audi's next-generation in-vehicle infotainment system.

Samsung Electronics will supply its latest 8-nanometre processors for Audi's next-generation in-vehicle infotainment system.

The South Korean tech giant's Exynos Auto V9 packs eight ARM Cortex-A76 cores -- which has a max speed of 2.1 GHz -- and will be used to power the German automobile manufacturer's new infotainment system that is set to debut in 2021, the company said.


The chip was designed for advanced infotainment systems that can display content on multiple screens. The V9 can support up to six displays and twelve camera connections for various subsystems.

It also packs an ARM Mali G76 GPU, HiFi 4 audio digital signal processor, and an intelligent neural processing unit. It supports LPDDR4 and LPDDR5 DRAM.

It also has a safety island core that supports the Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL)-B standards.

In October, Samsung introduced three separate Exynos brands for its chips aimed at future cars. Exynos Auto, its Exynos-branded processors aimed at cars, will be divided into Exynos Auto V, Exynos Auto A, and Exynos Auto T. V is for infotainment, A is for advanced driving assistance system, and T is for telematics

Samsung first clinched the partnership with Audi back in 2017.

The South Korean tech giant previously designated automotive components as its next-generation growth business back in 2015.

It also acquired US audio and auto-component giant Harman for US$8 billion in 2016 to further grow the business.

Samsung's System LSI business, which makes processors, is also designing safety chips for autonomous vehicles.



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