APRIL 2023 AFTERMARKET 27 www.aftermarketonline.net UK government backs seven self-driving projects with multi-million-pound grants On 1 February, the government confirmed the seven winners of its Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility competition. CAVForth II will receive £10.4m to launch the world’s first fullsized self-driving bus service in Edinburgh. Hub2Hub will receive £13.2m to develop a new zeroemissions self-driving HGV. Multi-Area Connected Automated Mobility will receive £15.2m to establish a remote driving control hub, and Project Cambridge Connector will receive £17.4m to trial on-demand self-driving taxis. Project Harlander will receive £11m to deploy a self-driving shuttle service around Belfast Harbour. Sunderland Advanced Mobility Shuttle will receive £6m and, finally, V-CAL will receive £8m to rollout self-driving and remotely piloted HGVs between the Vantec and Nissan sites in Sunderland. Business Secretary Grant Shapps said: “In just a few years’ time, the business of self-driving vehicles could add tens of billions to our economy and create tens of thousands of jobs across the UK. This is a massive opportunity to drive forward our priority to grow the economy, which we are determined to seize. “The support we are providing today will help our transport and technology pioneers steal a march on the global competition, by turning their bright ideas into market-ready products sooner than anyone else.” £40m-plus in public grants will be provided via the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), with industry consortia matching that sum. London-based mobility startup Imperium Drive made headlines last year when the BBC featured its Fetch rental car delivery trial in Milton Keynes. In October, it reached the last round of the Zenzic CAM Scale-Up selection process, with Programme Director Mark Cracknell praising the innovative solutions that will make future mobility cleaner, safer and more efficient. “We were formed in 2019 to build a new human-inthe-loop approach to autonomous driving,” explained Imperium CTO Sandip Gangakhedkar. “Fetch is our mobility service, which commercialises the technology we've built. Designed for urban door-to-door delivery, it’s based on remote driving. A trained remote driver, or operator, is responsible for driving the car on the road, based on live video feeds and sensor feedback sent over public infrastructure, like 4G and 5G networks. “We have our own small fleet of cars and are running a commercial pilot within the city boundaries of Milton Keynes. A select group of users can have the cars delivered to their doorsteps driverlessly. That’s our main USP. “Once the car is delivered, the customer can unlock it and drive it themselves, so at that point it ceases to be any kind of driverless experience. Once they’ve finished using it, the remote operator can re-take control and bring it back to base. It’s a new take on how autonomy can be developed sustainably and incrementally. “As well as the UK government’s code of practice for trialling automated vehicles, we’ve also taken on board additional guidelines and specifications (from BSI, CCAV, the Law Commission and others), around what it means to be safe, responsible and socially equitable. “The socially equitable aspect is often overlooked. Fetch decouples car ownership from car access, so you don't need to own a car to enjoy its benefits. “As an industry, we're still at an early stage in exploring topics like public acceptance and socioeconomic impacts. If you use the Gartner Hype Cycle, a common way of viewing emerging technologies, then 2021 was probably peak ‘trough of disillusionment’, and now we’re entering the ‘slope of enlightenment’. “Roll-out has to be gradual, because it has to be done responsibly. At the same time, our human-in-the-loop approach can be an important steppingstone to full self-driving. “It allows a remote human to take the driving decisions, as opposed to an artificially intelligent entity. That's key to responsibly scaling and improving the technology, slowly reducing the dependence on the remote driver. “We are definitely looking at expanding to other cities as soon as the model has been validated.” Fetch lives? Rental car delivery steppingstone to full self-driving?
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