Top Gear speaks to Potential about cameras, AI and the future of driving
12 June 2024
“Could this new terrain response technology be the future of off-roading?” Top Gear journalist Shafiq Abidin sat down for an exclusive interview with our CEO Sam Poirier to find out.
“It’s an interesting time to be a driver right now, with the advancement of electric vehicle technology and the integration of AI looming large. But have you ever wondered how these developments could shape off-roading in the future, and perhaps if those technologies could then be applied to daily driving?”
Shafiq Abidin conducted a wide-ranging interview with our CEO, Sam Poirier, for a detailed piece for Top Gear, one of the best-known and best-loved automotive publications (and TV shows) on the planet.
Neatly summing up what we’re trying to achieve, Shafiq notes: “The idea is to use a car’s in-built camera to anticipate forthcoming road conditions and improve its responsiveness to the situation.” Of our journey so far, he explains that we have “spent the last few years exploring new ways of how a vehicle could react to different surfaces and terrains using something most modern cars already have as standard: cameras.”
Talk about hitting the nail on the head!
“Could this new terrain response technology be the future of off-roading?”
Quoted in the article, Sam said: “The core of what we do is to make use of a vehicle’s onboard camera(s) to essentially be able to do terrain analysis. We … look ahead at any shifts in terrain, like if you’re passing over an area of low or high friction, or if you’re getting into an environment with lots of bumps. We then use this information to better inform elements like the pre-existing traction or suspension control.”
Top Gear often writes more about on-road vehicles than off-road machines, so Shafiq was keen to understand if there are on-road applications for our technology.
Sam explained: “In general if you look at road accidents, a lot of them are due to human error, but a good portion is still down to extreme circumstances such as weather. A big reason why weather may cause an accident, for instance, is because the driver or the vehicle doesn’t respond in time to a change in conditions. This is one of the areas where we see our technology helping.
“By being able to solve the most ‘extreme’ off-road problems, we can translate that to help us solve the more commonly occurring things. It means that we can help people who both want to go on long expeditions across countries and those who want to teeter around town.”
The goal, as the article quotes Sam, is: “To use automation to figure out the terrain ahead and make those drive lines or suspension switches automatically. It feels very much like going from a manual to an automatic transmission and means the vehicle is almost always optimised for whatever terrain it is that you’re driving on.”
“The idea is to use a car’s in-built camera to anticipate forthcoming road conditions and improve its responsiveness to the situation.”
A question we’re often asked is why the concept of Terrain Intelligence hasn’t already been invented, given how revolutionary it could be. Top Gear put the same point to Sam, who said: “It’s only really the technology that’s been around for the last decade or so that’s allowed us to make this development, and that has ultimately happened because we’ve seen breakthroughs with AI and computer vision.”
How could Terrain Intelligence be experienced by end users? There are two likely routes, explained Sam: “For the most part, we see this technology as something that just comes baked directly into the car. But when it comes to the more complex off-road technologies, that’s something that could for example be a switch that you toggle on for a weekend’s off-road adventure or week-long road trip. I think there will be options for how this is put in front of the customers.”