Part of the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge, the projects will feature a range of industrial, academic and government partners across six separate consortiums, with work focused on the safety, testing and certification of CAVs. The announcement follows the government’s calls for evidence for Last Mile and Future of Mobility, the results of which are published today. Funding for the simulation projects will be provided via Innovate UK.
“The UK has a long and proud history of leading the world in transport innovation and our Future of Mobility Grand Challenge is designed to ensure this continues,” said Transport Minister Jesse Norman.
“We are on the cusp of an exciting and profound change in how people, goods and services move around the country which is set to be driven by extraordinary innovation. This could bring significant benefits to people right across the country and presents enormous economic opportunities for the UK, with autonomous vehicles sales set to be worth up to £52 billion by 2035.”
The six future mobility simulation projects are:
OmniCAV – Development of a testing certification tool that can be used by accreditation bodies, insurers and manufacturers to accelerate the development of CAVs
COSMOS – A JLR-led simulation project to reduce sensor interference in traffic and improve safety
VeriCAV - Development of a simulation test system with automated generation of scenarios and realistic virtual actors
D-RISK - A novel scenario generator incorporating edge case scenarios to virtually validate a CAV's decision making and qualify risk
Simulation of Complex OffRoad Environments – Led by Cambridge startup Dynium Robot, this project will explore off-road simulation environments, aiming to reduce the cost of deploying autonomous vehicles on farms
Sim4SafeCAV – Also led by JLR, this will combine simulation with safety for SAE level 4 autonomous vehicles
Academic partners across the six projects include the Universities of Warwick, Leeds and Birmingham, as well as University College London and Imperial. A full list of the consortium partners for each of the projects can be found here.
UK productivity hindered by digital skills deficit – report
This is a bit of a nebulous subject. There are several sub-disciplines of 'digital skills' which all need different approaches. ...