Remote Control Range Rover Sport – drive it by phone

Jaguar Land Rover has revealed its Remote Control Range Rover Sport research vehicle, which as its moniker implies can be handled remotely by the driver from outside the car, with the operation being carried out via an application running off a smartphone.

Don’t be expecting all sorts of tricks and high-speed maneouvres with this, because the speeds presented by the RC application are far from pacy – the fastest that you can move the RRS along is 6.5 km/h (yes, that’s a decimal point in between the two numbers).

The idea behind the application is to allow drivers the ability to manoeuvre their car out of challenging situations safely or to negotiate difficult off-road terrain, with the smartphone app offering control of steering, accelerator and brakes as well as changing between high and low range.

By walking alongside the vehicle, the driver can continually check ramp, approach and departure angles and allow precise positioning of the vehicle when rock crawling as well as when fording a stream or traversing sections made slippery by mud or snow. In an urban environment, the app can help reverse the car out of a parking space if someone has parked too close for them to open the door.

The remote control function will only operate if the user is within 10 metres of the vehicle and if the smart key is detected – if the driver moves out of range or gets too close, the system will halt movement of the vehicle.

The RC bit isn’t the only assistance tech being touted by JLR – there’s the ‘Multi-Point Turn’ Range Rover, which is able to do a three-point turn in fully automated fashion. The system uses sensors to assess available space and to avoid pedestrians, vehicles and other objects.

The research team is working on a system to scan the environment around the car and inform the driver whether it is safe to perform the turning manoeuvre. Once the driver confirms the manoeuvre, the car does the rest, taking over the process of gear selection, steering, braking and acceleration to make as many forward and backwards movements as necessary to achieve the turn.

The RC and multi-point turn are prototype technologies that the firm’s UK-based research team are developing to deliver autonomous driving in the future. The company is also carrying out research development of human machine interface (HMI) systems in autonomous transport pods.

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