JLR Technology ‘Reads’ Roads to Spot Potholes

Jaguar Land Rover is developing technology that will allow a vehicle to identify the location and severity of potholes, broken drains and raised manhole covers and send the details to warn other vehicles.

The Whitley, U.K.-based automaker says the aim is for the data to be shared in real time via the cloud not only with other vehicles, but also with road authorities to help them prioritize repairs.

If a car could receive advance warning from another vehicle about severe potholes or similar hazards, the driver could slow down and avoid the danger, or the car could adjust suspension settings to reduce the impact and smooth the ride.

This could help reduce the potential for tire, wheel and vehicle damage as well as accidents that cost an estimated $4.3 billion (£2.8 billion) a year in the U.K.

Mike Bell, director-JLR Global Connected Car, says the automaker’s Range Rover Evoque research vehicle can identify the location and severity of road hazards and adjust the suspension in milliseconds.

“Our MagneRide-equipped Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport vehicles feature sophisticated sensors that allow the vehicle to profile the road surface under the wheels and identify potholes, raised manholes and broken drain covers,” Bell says in a statement.

MagneRide is a semi-active suspension-control system that responds in real time to road and driving conditions based on input from sensors that monitor body and wheel motion.

Using a special damping fluid containing magnetic particles, the system can respond instantly. When the particles are subjected to a magnetic field, the viscosity of the damper fluid is either increased or decreased, making the suspension stiffer or softer.

“By monitoring the motion of the vehicle and changes in the height of the suspension, the car is able to continuously adjust the vehicle’s suspension characteristics, giving passengers a more comfortable ride over uneven and damaged road surfaces,” Bell says.

JLR believes the information from these vehicle sensors can be added to “big data” and shared for the benefit of other road users.

Look Out Ahead, Not Below

The next stage of the project at JLR’s Advanced Research Center is to install new road-surface-sensing technology in the Evoque research vehicle, including an advanced forward-facing stereo digital camera.

“At the moment the most accurate data comes from when the car has driven over the pothole or manhole,” Bell says. “We are researching how we could improve the measurement and accuracy of pothole detection by scanning the road ahead, so the car could predict how severe they are before the vehicle gets near them.”

Sensing the road ahead and assessing hazards is a key milepost on the journey to realizing the autonomous car, Bell says.

“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. If the pothole hazard was significant enough, safety systems could slow or even stop the car to minimize the impact.”

The JLR research team will work with the Coventry City Council to understand how road-profile information could be shared with road authorities, and identify which data would be most useful for road-maintenance teams to identify and prioritize repairs.

Councilor Rachel Lancaster says the city will investigate how JLR’s pothole-alert system could supply data immediately from thousands of connected cars across the city’s road network.

“This could give us a very accurate, minute-by-minute picture of damage to road surfaces, manholes and drains in real time,” Lancaster says.

JLR is looking to see if its experimental camera could record an image of the pothole or damaged manhole and send this to road authorities, together with a GPS location.