Self-driving infrastructure projects win £51m

FUNDING

Four projects across five locations have been awarded a total of £51m in funding for creating the environments needed to fully test connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology.

The projects are the first to be funded from the government’s £100m Connected and Autonomous Vehicles testing infrastructure programme announced in November 2016 and will be matched by industry.

The consortia selected in this first round are led by HORIBA MIRA, Millbrook Proving Ground, TRL and the Warwick Manufacturing Group. Their projects will test the speed, safety and potential opportunities for delivering CAV innovation.

HORIBA MIRA in Nuneaton will build a new site alongside its existing vehicle test tracks where automated vehicles can be tested at the limits of their speed and handling to ensure they are safe.

Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire and Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) based in the Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire will set up a range of different test areas mimicking increasingly realistic city driving environments, where automated vehicles can be tested before being taken onto public roads.

Two projects will adapt real world locations for testing of automated vehicles in live traffic: TRL will lead a project to set up live test environments in Greenwich and Stratford’s Olympic Park in London; Warwick Manufacturing Group will set up real world test environments in Coventry and Birmingham

The CAV projects are due to be fully operational and advancing technology development within the next 18 to 24 months.