Taking a ride in a self-driving car in Dubai

Gulf News

See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos  Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  The first Jaguar iPace driverless car hits the streets of Dubai during the Dubai World Congress for Self-Driving Transport  #selfdrivingcar #driverlesscar #Dubai

Transcript

00:00So I'm ready, you're ready, yep there we go and the car's driving itself. Simple as that.

00:08Hi guys this is Dhanesh here from Gulf News. We're here at the Dubai World Congress for

00:12self-driving transport. We're about to check out the Jaguar I-Pace. Now this is a custom-made car

00:19right now that they have created just to show us what autonomous driving in Dubai would be like.

00:25So come check it out.

00:26We are Jaguar Land Rover and this is our very first autonomous I-Pace all-electric vehicle.

00:38We have developed it for this event, for this route that we're working on. We've been working

00:42on this particular vehicle for about three months. We have taken, if you look at the screen,

00:48a completely standard I-Pace. That comes with the front radar, rear radars and the front camera.

00:55That gives us certain standard ADAS features. So safety features, autonomous emergency braking,

01:02so it'll brake automatically should you be almost about to get into a collision. The camera up

01:06behind the rear view mirror, that sole job is to look for traffic lights and classify them and

01:12decide whether they're red or green or not. A particularly good thing about being over here

01:15is your traffic lights. They're excellent, they're very bright, very clear and it makes our system

01:21easier to work with. It classifies traffic lights easier here. So I'm ready.

01:25You ready? Yep, there we go and the car's driving itself. Simple as that.

01:32So there's two distinct roles in the car. There's me behind the wheel which is the safety driver.

01:38I'm here to regain control of the car if anything should go wrong. Obviously this is a prototype.

01:44Alan's in the car because he's controlling and looking at the autonomous software that's

01:49controlling the car now. So I'm in control of the main car, Alan's in control of the autonomous

01:54software that's now driving the car. So two very distinct roles. If I need to, I can regain control

02:00of the car at any point in time. I can press the brake and the car will slow down or even stop.

02:05I can also accelerate. That's all while the car is still in autonomous mode.

02:09I can also grab the steering wheel but the autonomy will drop out if I do that and I'll

02:13have to do or Alan will have to re-engage the autonomous system to make that work.

02:17But what we do have is a manual button which means at any point in time if there's some

02:21debris in the road I want to drive around or something, I can go manual, drive around it back

02:25onto the route and then go back to autonomous at any point in time along the route. So the car is

02:30now slowing down for the speed hump. As Alan has already said, we've created a high definition map

02:37so all self-driving cars will need a high definition map at some point.

02:42We have to create it ourselves at the moment because we can't buy it off the shelf from anybody.

02:45So we've already been over here and mapped things like the speed bumps as we were just saying,

02:49the traffic lights that will come up ahead, not only the traffic light itself but where the car

02:54should stop. So stop in position for the traffic light as well. So you'll see as we get to the

02:58screen in a minute it will change. You see the traffic lights and it will see it has a traffic

03:04light in red and it will show. So again with the high definition side it's also showing where

03:12which lane the car is going to go into. In Dubai you have many lane roads and it could be three

03:18lanes that all go left, three lanes can go right or straight on. So you also need to know which

03:22direction each lane can go so the car can know which lane to get into to know where it's going.

03:27So the lights have changed, we're about to go off, the car's moved away.

03:31There we go. So again the arrows and lights have changed green on the screen. Now it disappears we've

03:36gone past it which shows the car driving around the junction. And then we'll speed up to the

03:43speed limit on this road which is 80 kph. Just slowing that car a little bit. There we go.

03:57Picked up the car, slowing down the car. So there's no vehicles in front obviously we'd stop

04:02at the front of the traffic lights because there are vehicles we pace off them accordingly.

04:07When the lights change exactly the same. If the light were at the front we would decide based on

04:11the colour of the light. Because we're not, we use the colour of the light and the vehicle at the front.

04:16So this is the camera here, the traffic light recognition camera. It's looking at all of the

04:20traffic lights it can see ahead and you can see which are red. It's using the closest ones in

04:24the centre of the screen to determine whether it's the right light to change when it's green.

04:28So it's just moved forward because he moved forward. So this is our first time ever developing

04:33a an all-electric vehicle for self-driving. That's one of the main challenges because all

04:38our other vehicles we've done it with have an engine and gearbox. So changing gear was what was

04:44needed before. However this one we don't need to. It's all about the refinement with the motor.

04:48Make sure it accelerates. You can feel it can accelerate quite quickly. So to try and make it

04:52as smooth as possible for the passengers is the number one goal. Smooth and safe is all

04:58what we're trying to achieve. There we go now I'll just indicate to go across.

05:04Pull into the trade centre.

05:28Come to a stop at the end there'll be a bit of a message on the screen and then

05:31we'll end. You see the steering wheel drop back down to be handled.

05:41So we just checked out the Jaguar I-PACE and it's well the self-driving version. Very cool to see.

05:48We had a short little drive where we went past signals. We went on a speed breaker. We saw

05:54acceleration and deceleration. We saw it curve itself and come into a spot for parking. Very

06:00exciting for the UAE. I really hope to see autonomous driving soon. But yeah thank you

06:07very much for watching.

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