Land Rover is well-known for being one of the first manufacturers to introduce driving modes, specifically in the off-road segment. Its famous Terrain Response, first introduced in the 2005 Land Rover Discovery, introduced modes like grass, gravel, snow, mud and ruts, and rock crawl. The driver could simply look out the window at what terrain they were facing, and turn the dial inside the car to match. The car’s ECU, differentials, suspension, and electronic nannies would sort out the rest.
A new patent filed with the UK’s Intellectual Property Office, suggests Land Rover wants to make this system even more user-friendly for inexperienced off-roaders or those who have grown accustomed to voice-activated features.
AI-Driven Voice Command Enhances Driving Mode Control
In a nutshell, Land Rover wants to use natural language processing (NLP) to engage a specific driving mode, but it’s also more complex than that.
A natural language processor usually relies on a simple demand such as, “Hey Land Rover, skip this song.” With this new system, Land Rover wants to use a text-to-speech model, which is then fed through a pre-trained NLP model, which may even use artificial intelligence.
Effortless Off-Road Mode Selection
Experienced off-roaders will simply tell their Land Rover to switch driving modes, using the simple language model most automakers have implemented. The driver can say, “Engage mud and ruts mode,” and the car will do it. In this use case, it just removes the hassle of turning the old-school dial setup.
Less experienced off-roaders can rely on the pre-trained NLP model a bit more. Instead of wondering which mode to use, they can tell the car that they’re stuck in the snow. The example used in the patent application is, “I’m stuck in deep snow, what should I do?”
The NLP will realize that the snow driving mode is required and will engage it. We then turn the clock back to old-school Terrain Response, where the car uses the available software and hardware to find the correct setting for snow.
As mentioned in the patent, for snow, “the accelerator response may be softened to reduce tire slip, [the] gear selection biased towards a higher gear and accelerator response softened to help avoid loss of traction.”
Land Rover Advances Terrain Response
Since its introduction, Land Rover’s Terrain Response has been the golden standard in the segment, forcing rivals like Toyota and Ford to come up with systems like Crawl Control and G.O.A.T (Goes Over All Terrain) systems.
Not only will this keep Land Rover at the forefront of making off-roading as easy as possible, but it should also make the activity more accessible and useful to those who may not be as comfortable with the car’s inherent capabilities.
Since Land Rover’s voice assistant already exists, it simply needs to develop the necessary language and intelligence model needed to convert speech to the required driving mode.
