Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) electric vehicle test facility in Coventry has enlisted an unlikely new recruit: a four-legged robotic dog named ‘Rover’, part of the manufacturer’s push to electrify its brands by 2030.
Developed by Boston Dynamics, Rover plays a key role in monitoring the facility’s vast array of assets, ensuring smooth operations and spotting potential issues early.
The robot, which performs up to 24 patrols a day, navigates doors, stairs, and high-traffic areas, using its advanced sensors to detect problems such as gas leaks and overheated batteries. This autonomous 24/7 operation allows JLR engineers to focus on analysis and repairs, ensuring smoother maintenance and development of vehicles like the upcoming Range Rover Electric.
Just like a regular guard dog, ‘Rover’ has its own kennel at the plant, where it periodically lives and charges its 50V battery between shifts. However, unlike a regular dog, Boston Dynamics’ robot can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and doesn’t get distracted by loud sounds, unusual sights or smells.
Rover’s role is part of JLR’s broader £18 billion investment in its Reimagine strategy, which aims to electrify its Range Rover, Defender, Discovery, and Jaguar brands by 2030. The company is exploring future applications for a fleet of robotic quadrupeds across its global operations. Additionally, Lyons Park is trialling plasma cleaning robots, which remove microscopic particles from battery cells.
Gonzalo Ejarque-Rinaldini, PhD in Automation and Robotics at JLR, emphasised the collaboration with Boston Dynamics as essential to supporting JLR’s electrification goals, helping engineers work “safer and smarter” while ensuring EV technology is of the highest standard. He said:
“Key to JLR’s Reimagine strategy is a continual collaboration with the industry’s brightest minds, developing advanced robotics solutions that work in harmony with our employees for the uncompromising benefit of our clients.
“Enabling our engineers to work safer and smarter, collaborations such as this one with Boston Dynamics are key. Not only are they essential in realising our ambition to electrify our Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar brands by 2030, they also have an important role to play in ensuring that the final vehicles that roll off the line have only the very best EV battery technology within them.”
With Boston Dynamics’ Rover already performing vital duties within JLR’s EV build and test facility at Lyons Park, JLR is now scoping out future use scenarios for a fleet of robotic quadrupeds across its entire global industrial footprint. This includes at its Solihull plant where preparations are well underway for the launch of Ranger Rover Electric, and also where Jaguar will begin an exciting new era as a pure‑electric modern luxury brand – the first of which will be a 4‑door GT, the most powerful and sustainable Jaguar ever with a range of c.700 kms, priced from £100,000.
JLR’s investment into robotics forms part of the luxury vehicle manufacturer’s wider £18bn investment into its Reimagine strategy, with Lyons Park also proofing the use of plasma cleaning robots. These robots have a pivotal part to play, removing microscopic dust particles from battery cells ahead of bonding, which would otherwise not be visible to the human eye.
