Eight new projects have been awarded £20 million in funding to research and develop enhanced communication between vehicles and roadside infrastructure or urban information systems, including new ‘talking car technologies’, Business Secretary Sajid Javid will announce on a visit to the autonomous vehicles test bed in Nuneaton.

The projects are the first to be funded from the government’s £100 million Intelligent Mobility Fund. They range from developing autonomous shuttles to carry visually-impaired passengers using advanced sensors and control systems, to new simulation trials for autonomous pods to increase uptake and improve real-world trials.

Trials to test driverless cars on the streets are currently being worked on in Bristol, Coventry and Milton Keynes, and Greenwich. Autonomous vehicles are also being used in Heathrow to shuttle passengers, although these are currently on designated tracks.

The UK has a rich fabric of scientists and engineers who have established the UK as pioneers in the research and development of connected and autonomous vehicles. Today’s funding will help strengthen the UK as a global centre for the fast-growing intelligent mobility market, estimated to be worth £900 billion per year globally by 2025.

The 8 collaborative R&D projects to receive funding are:

  • UK Connected Intelligent Transport Environment (UKCITE): a project to create the most advanced environment for testing connected and autonomous vehicles. It involves equipping over 40 miles of urban roads, dual-carriageways and motorways with combinations of 3 “talking car technologies” and testing for a fourth, known as LTE-V. The project will establish how this technology can improve journeys; reduce traffic congestion; and provide entertainment and safety services through better connectivity. (Total project: £5.6 million; BIS funding: £3.4 million; duration: 30 months; consortium members: Visteon Engineering Services Limited, Jaguar Land Rover Ltd, Coventry City Council, Siemens PLC, Vodafone Group Services Ltd, Huawei Technologies (UK) Co Ltd, HORIBA MIRA Ltd, Coventry University, University of Warwick (WMG), Highways England Company Ltd.)

  • Insight: a project to develop driverless shuttles with advanced sensors and control systems and trial them in city pedestrian areas, with a particular focus on improving urban accessibility for disabled and visually-impaired people. (£2.2 million; £1.5 million; 36 months; Westfield Sportscars Limited, Heathrow Enterprises Ltd, Fusion Processing Ltd, Creative Example Ltd, Conigital Ltd, Birmingham City University.)
  • Tools for autonomous logistics operations and management: this project is a collaboration bringing together transport modellers and the computer games industry to develop new modelling and help improve the return on investment into Connected and Autonomous Vehicle fleets significantly. (£3.2 million; £2 million; 36 months; Immense Simulations Ltd, Improbable Ltd.)
  • FLOURISH: this project will help develop innovative new tools to improve the understanding of user needs and expectations of connected and autonomous vehicles. It will be based in the Bristol City Region and will test capabilities in both urban and suburban networked environments. (£5.5 million; £3.7 million; 36 months; Atkins Limited, Age UK, Airbus Group Limited, React AI Ltd (Aiseedo), AXA UK plc, Bristol City Council, Imtech Traffic & Infra UK Limited, Office for Public Management Ltd, South Gloucestershire Council, Designability, Transport Systems Catapult, TSS – Transport Simulation Systems Ltd, University of Bristol, University of the West of England, Bristol

  • MOVE-UK: this project will be focused on accelerating the development, market readiness and deployment of automated driving systems. (£5.5 million; £3.4 million; 36 months; Bosch, Jaguar Land Rover Limited, TRL Limited, The Floow Limited, Direct Line Insurance, Royal Borough of Greenwich.)

  • INnovative Testing of Autonomous Control Techniques (INTACT): this project will reduce the cost of testing and evaluating autonomous control systems in a safe, repeatable, controlled and scientifically rigorous environment. (£1 million; £850k; 24 months; Richmond Design and Marketing Ltd, University of Warwick.)

  • Pathway to Autonomous Commercial Vehicles: this project will develop an innovative solution to monitor key information from the vehicle and predict safety risks based on analytics. It will build on a prototype which monitors tyre pressures and temperatures in commercial vehicles, combined with always-on network connection. (£1.2 million; £900k; 24 months; Tructyre Fleet Management Ltd, University of Portsmouth, Satellite Applications Catapult, RL Automotive.)
  • i-MOTORS – Intelligent Mobility for Future Cities Transport Systems: i-MOTORS will deliver a connected Vehicle to Anything (V2X) system via a mobile platform as a proof of concept. In addition, the project will develop hardware which will receive and analyse sensory data in real-time from multiple locations via online cloud technology to raise the standard of data-processing in the connected and autonomous driving industry.

Learn more at gov.uk