Jaguar develops new self-driving car that looks at pedestrians at zebra crossings

Crossing the road can be nerve-wracking enough when you know there’s a driver behind the wheel.

But if you see a car that’s driving itself, you’d be forgiven for keeping to the kerb for fear it won’t stop in time.

Now, however, manufacturers are developing self-driving cars that make ‘eye contact’ with pedestrians to reassure them that they’ve been ‘seen’.

Jaguar Land Rover have fitted virtual ‘eyes’ to self-driving car pods to see how far people will trust them to stop at zebra crossings.

The large, cartoon-like eyes – complete with digital eyelids and pupils – sit roughly where headlights might be, making the cars resemble the children’s TV character Brum, the little yellow car who took himself off on adventures. 

The eyes are programmed to interact with people by ‘looking’ at pedestrians spotted by the car’s radar sensors and cameras. 

The large, cartoon-like eyes sit roughly where headlights might be, making the cars resemble the children’s TV character Brum (pictured)

The pupils ‘follow’ walkers as they cross and will also look at drivers coming out of side roads, or approaching them.

The aim of the Government-backed trials is to replicate human interactions and see what features will be needed in the future to ensure we trust driverless cars not to mow us down. 

Ministers says driverless cars will be on Britain’s roads by 2021.

Jaguar Land Rover has enlisted the help of cognitive psychologists to better understand ‘human trust in self-driving vehicles’. 

It comes after research showed 63 per cent of pedestrians and cyclists were worried about how safe it will be to share the road with a self-driving vehicle. 

Earlier this year the first person was killed by a driverless car in a collision in Arizona.

The trials form part of Jaguar Land Rover’s £20million UK Autodrive project, which has seen a fleet of self-driving cars tested in and around Coventry.