Trials of driverless cars will be taking place over the next few years under the auspices of the UK Autodrive consortium to test both the technology and public reaction to autonomous vehicles. A key element of the £20m UK Autodrive project is the implementation of a Low-Speed Autonomous Transport System, which will see 40 self-driving pods carrying members of the public on routes around Milton Keynes city centre, linking in to key transportation hubs and car parks and travelling through pedestrianised areas.
Our first speaker, Dr Graeme Smith is CEO of Oxbotica, a spinout from the University of Oxford’s robotic department which specialises in mobile autonomy, machinery and perception. Oxbotica is a pivotal contributor to UK Autodrive and will develop the entire autonomous control systems and sensor sub-systems that enable real-world operation of driverless vehicles in urban and pedestrianised areas around Milton Keynes. Graeme will be speaking about the technological challenges and solutions that Oxbotica have had to address in developing driverless car technology and this project in particular.
Our second speaker, Dr Nick Reed will talk about the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) – one of three projects awarded funding by Innovate UK as part of a £19m programme to investigate driverless cars in the UK. Led by TRL (the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory) and with partners including the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Shell and Telefónica, the project will test a range of different automated vehicles and examine public acceptance and industry engagement with each. It will also include the use of DigiCar (TRL’s high fidelity driving simulator) and will examine opportunities for improvements to traffic management through vehicle to infrastructure communication.
Who should attend?
This event should be of interest to anyone interested in the future of our urban environments (in the first instance), such as engineers, CTOs and CSOs, IT embedded software engineers, academics working in this field and policymakers, to name but a few.
