£81m for self-driving vehicle projects

Edinburgh autonomous bus project and driverless North East HGV scheme among successful projects

Passengers will be boarding the world’s first full-sized, self-driving bus service in Edinburgh from the Spring, after it was awarded a share of £81m in joint UK government and industry support for selfdriving transport technology.

The CAVForth II project is one of seven successful projects from around the UK, and forms the most advanced set of commercial, self-driving passenger and freight operations anywhere in the world.

The grants are part of the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Connected and Automated Mobility programme. The scheme’s aim is to help British companies seize early opportunities to develop experimental projects into offerings ready for the market. Some £42m in government funding is being matched by industry. Industry consortia will match the public grant to around £81m and will be expected to demonstrate a sustainable commercial service by 2025.

The joint government and industry funding winners are:

• CAVForth II – Fusion Processing: £10.4m to launch an operational, fullsized, self-driving bus service in Edinburgh with Stagecoach and Alexander Dennis

• V-CAL: North East Automotive Alliance: £8m to roll out self-driving and remotely piloted HGVs between the Vantec and Nissan sites in Sunderland

• Hub2Hu – HVS: £13.2m to develop a new, zero emissions, self-driving HGV with Asda

• Sunderland Advanced Mobility Shuttle – City of Sunderland Council: £6m to build and trial a self-driving shuttle service to the University of Sunderland and the Sunderland Royal Hospital

• Project Harlander – Belfast Harbour: £11m to deploy a self-driving shuttle service around Belfast Harbour

• Multi-Area Connected Automated Mobility – Conigital: £15.2m to establish a remote driving control hub, to oversee self-driving vehicles operating in Solihull and Coventry, with the NEC and local councils

• Project Cambridge Connector –Greater Cambridge Partnership: £17.4m to trial on-demand, self-driving taxis, to complement existing transport services in parts of Cambridge.

Almost £600,000 has also been awarded for feasibility studies, looking into how self-driving technology could improve public transport in four parts of the UK. These projects will look into potential routes where automated vehicles could operate exclusively from other traffic, to relieve congestion on the A414 through Hertfordshire and Essex, parts of Eastern Cambridge, Birmingham and Solihull, and Milton Keynes.

Driverless parking to be rolled out across Germany

Bosch and APCOA Parking Group are planning to install automated valet parking technology across Germany. Last year the companies received approval for the commercial use of the system in the P6 parking garage at Stuttgart Airport. The partners now plan to expand the infrastructurebased, automated and driverless SAE Level 4 parking system at 15 sites.

Automated valet parking will be available in selected parking garages in cities such as Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. Further car parks in Europe are set to follow. As a first step, Bosch and APCOA will make up to four parking spaces per parking garage ready for automated valet parking.

Automated valet parking involves a driver parking their self-driving capable vehicle in a handover zone near the entrance of a parking garage and using an app to start the automated and driverless parking service. The basis for this is Bosch stereo cameras which not only identify vacant parking spaces but also monitor the driving aisle and its surroundings, and detect obstacles or people in the aisle.

If an unexpected obstacle is detected, the vehicle brakes and safely comes to a complete stop. Only once the route is clear does it continue on its way. For this purpose, all the data generated by the cameras is fed into edge computers. Algorithms transmit the driving manouevre to be made and thus enable driverless parking – even when moving between storeys on narrow ramps.

Bosch anticipates that its modular system will allow the number of parking spaces featuring the infrastructure technology to be quickly expanded to up to 200 parking bays at each of the 15 locations.

Dr Markus Heyn, member of the Bosch board of management and chairman of the mobility solutions business sector, said: “We will expand the number of such parking spaces based on the expected ramp-up of vehicles featuring automated valet parking. Our experience with charge spots for electric vehicles shows us how important it is for infrastructure growth to keep pace with the technology. Together with our partner APCOA, we are now making sure that this will be the case for automated valet parking.”

The master agreement signed by Bosch and APCOA is the first step toward a worldwide market launch. The companies’ goal is to equip several hundred parking garages across the globe with automated valet parking in the years ahead.