Under yesterday’s Autumn Statement announcement an additional £9m is being provided by the Government to increase the prize fund for driverless car testbeds – enabling trials in Bristol, London and Milton Keynes/Coventry from next year.

This is in addition to the UK Government’s £10m “Introducing Driverless Cars” competition, which was announced earlier in the year.

Milton Keynes/Coventry

The joint project to trial driverless cars in Milton Keynes/Coventry has been awarded to “UK Autodrive”, a consortium of local authorities, technology and automotive businesses and academic institutions from the UK and including Jaguar Land Rover and Ford.

The £10m funding provided by Innovate UK will be matched by the 12 consortium members to create a £19.2m three year project which will be led by design and engineering consultants Arup.

Real-world testing on public roads will develop in-car, car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure technologies that will support autonomous driving and the development of new technologies on a semi-autonomous Range Rover research vehicle.

The consortium said the aim is not full autonomy, but a passenger car that is capable of being autonomous for part of the time.

The project will also include the development and evalution of lightweight self-driving pods designed for pedestrianised spaces. Jaguar Land Rover‘s researchers will develop the Human Machine Interface (HMI) strategy and lead the real-world trials of these technologies in these pods.

Tim Armitage, UK Autodrive project director, Arup, said: ‘Our plan with the practical demonstration phases is to start testing with single vehicles on closed roads, and to build up to a point where all road users, as well as legislators, the police and insurance companies, are confident about how driverless pods and fully and partially autonomous cars can operate safely on UK roads.’

Greenwich

To cover the Greenwich region, Innovate UK has chosen a consortium led by TRL to deliver the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment).

The £8m project will see three trials of different types of zero emission automated vehicles within an ‘innovative, technology-agnostic testing environment’ and will also be used for thorough investigation of how automated vehicles can add to a busy multimodal transport system.

TRL’s full mission driving simulator, DigiCar, will be used in parallel to investigate driver behaviour with automated vehicles using a photorealistic 3D model of the Greenwich peninsula. Risk, liability and insurance issues will be specifically addressed whilst pedestrian models of interaction with automated vehicles will be developed alongside exploration of adaptation to traffic lights to enable safe and effective automated vehicle operation.

Bristol

Finally, for the city of Bristol, the Innovate UK has awarded £5m to a consortium called Venturer, which includes engineering firm Atkins, Bristol City and South Gloucestershire councils, Bristol Robotics Laboratory and insurance firm Axa.

Lee Woodcock, project lead and technology director for Atkins’ highways and transportation business at Aztec West, said: ‘We are thrilled to be appointed to lead the UK development of an independent test site for, and a market leading capability in, autonomous vehicles.

‘The consortium have joined forces to explore the feasibility of driverless cars in the UK, by trialling autonomous vehicles in the Bristol region, investigating the legal and insurance aspects of driverless cars and exploring how the public react to such vehicles.

‘This programme will help keep the UK at the forefront of this transformational technology, helping to deepen our understanding of the impact on road users and wider society and open up new opportunities for our economy and society.’