Self-driving event report: Oxbotica’s Newman addresses insurance professionals at Lloyd’s of London

Oxbotica at Lloyd’s: Why insurance and self-driving are inextricably entwined

On Tuesday 28 February, in the Banqueting Suite at one of London’s most iconic buildings, Tom Allebone-Webb, Head of Strategy & Innovation at Lloyd’s, introduced a packed audience of insurance professionals to Professor Paul Newman, Founder and CTO of Oxbotica.

The prestigious address in question was 1 Lime Street, the Richard Rogers-designed home of Lloyd’s of London, and the official title of the event was “The Future of Autonomy”.

The blurb promised an opportunity to “get up close with a zero occupancy all-electric self-driving vehicle which will revolutionise the goods and delivery market”, but there was much more to it than that.

The previous afternoon we spoke to Sam Tiltman, Sharing Economy and Mobility Leader for the UK & Ireland at Marsh, “the world’s leading insurance broker and risk advisor”, who described it as a call to action for a technological leap akin to the development of the internet.

“The combined impact of mobility as a service, electric vehicles and automation will be huge,” he said. “If autonomous vehicles deliver on their premise, they will significantly reduce risk, so if we don’t invest in this, then we, as an industry, will be disrupted.”

Insurance call to action

Oxbotica and Applied EV's zero-occupancy self-driving vehicle at Lloyd's of London, Feb 2023
Oxbotica and Applied EV’s zero-occupancy self-driving vehicle at Lloyd’s of London, Feb 2023

If any attendees were labouring under the impression that this is still the stuff of science fiction, the car parked outside the grand main entrance must have piqued their interest.

It was our first time seeing the record-breaking Applied EV vehicle for ourselves. However, regular readers will be familiar with its impressive radar vision, laser-based sensors and Oxbotica Driver System.

Passers-by were clearly more struck by what it doesn’t have – doors, windows, seats or a steering wheel. Last year it became the first autonomous vehicle to operate on UK public roads without a driver – a landmark achievement.

Both Tiltman and Applied EV CEO, Julian Broadbent, were also panellists for a lively Q&A, more of which later. First came Professor Newman’s presentation.

Oxbotica's Newman on self-driving at Lloyd's of London, 28 Feb 2023
Oxbotica’s Newman on self-driving at Lloyd’s of London, 28 Feb 2023

Dispensing with the faltering microphone, he spoke eloquently and with great passion for close to an hour. Opening with a crowd pleasing “insurance is awesome” message, he asserted that: “Insurance and autonomy are intertwined, because both will be everywhere.

“Since the days of the horse and cart we have persisted with the idea of one operator per vehicle. Now it can be ‘n’ operators per vehicle, and it will be insurers who decide what ‘n’ is.”

The four key questions that self-driving vehicles constantly ask, he said, are: Where am I? What is around me? What do I do? And what do I share?

He used the introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park as an analogy for the kind of “trophic cascade” that self-driving vehicles will bring about. For example, the energy-saving benefits of lights being turned off at automated ports – because autonomous vehicles don’t need them.

More pertinently, he continued: “Offline, the residual data from autonomy can be used to assess risk. Online, at a danger point, you can change behaviour. We call this insurance-in-the-loop.

“Assurance (and insurance) is king, so how do you test, verify and validate? We thought, let’s not waste our life scripting certain edge cases, let’s build AI to train the software. That’s Meta Driver.”

He finished with some eye-catching examples of scenarios encountered during real-world testing, and more challenging ‘deep fake’ examples of similar scenarios, created by tweaking variables such as timings, light levels and weather.

Self-driving vehicle manufacturing

There followed a short presentation by Broadbent, who explained his background in vehicle manufacturing and mission to design “cleaner, more efficient machines specifically for doing an autonomous job.”

Applied EV's Broadbent on self-driving at Lloyd's of London, 28 Feb 2023
Applied EV’s Broadbent on self-driving at Lloyd’s of London, 28 Feb 2023

On upscaling from the skateboard-like vehicle out front, through small cab-less delivery vehicles, to bigger trucks, he said the question was always: “What’s the next size up that we can make software defined?”

On public perception, he concluded: “We’re interested in how they interact and mainly people find them very dull, but there is a danger of a ‘scary clown’ problem.”

Self-driving Q&A

Next up was the aforementioned panel session, hosted by Allebone-Webb and featuring Newman, Broadbent and Tiltman, along with Chris Moore, of digital insurance specialist Apollo ibott 1971, and Rebecca Marsden, formerly of Apollo and now VP of Risk and Insurance at Oxbotica.

Opening the debate, Marsden said: “This is not just about risk management. The depth of data is transformative. It requires us to be collaborative.” 

Tiltman agreed, encouraging a broader, more embedded role for insurers. “There is so much variance between different jurisdictions, we need to step up and help shape regulations,” he said.

Self-driving panel at Lloyd's of London, 28 Feb 2023
Self-driving panel at Lloyd’s of London, 28 Feb 2023

Questions from the audience began with the reasonably blunt: “If you reduce risk sufficiently, do you need insurance at all?”

Moore responded: “Under our partnership with Oxbotica, we see them as a buyer of insurance today but a future distributor of insurance products or even a co-insurance partner in the future. This industry is currently very product focused, whereas we need to transition to being client and solution focussed. We have to break out of our silos and create a new product, an autonomy product.”

Further questions covered the possibility of a court requiring a developer to reveal “what’s inside the black box”, the possibility that unscrupulous actors might target self-driving cars in next-gen cash-for-crash scams, and the thorny issue of cyberattacks.

“The truth is the work is never finished, and insurers must be part of this digital solution – it will be ongoing, not something you can photocopy,” said Newman. “It will involve the sharing of best practice and keeping in mind why I got into this in the first place – safety. More parents should keep their kids, and more kids should keep their parents.”

It was a compelling point on which to end. For us though, the day was not quite done, as Newman generously found time to do a follow-up interview.

Paul Newman interview

We started with validation and the acceptability of simulation data.

PN: “Consider the combined experience of all vehicles in all places against the experience inside the skull of a 16-year-old just learning to drive. That’s all about risk, insurance and lifelong learning. Think about the hyperscalers’ access to data globally – it’s almost unfathomable.

“Just like computing, this is a technology we will be building on for all time. Of course, there has to be testing and statistics around actual vehicles operating in certain ways. But there comes a point when you have to ask: Can we augment that with something superhuman? Starting with real data is very important. We start with real images or real laser or radar data, and then massively exponentiate.”

We then tried to tease out what Oxbotica’s next big announcements might be.

PN: “We’re looking at energy, delivery, agriculture and construction; we’re very into 16-person shuttles in various cities, so that’s pretty much all vehicle types. It’s a pretty agnostic answer.” Well, can’t blame us for trying!

OK, final question: At the end of the event just now, people were talking about what happens in real time if the vehicle thinks it is off policy?

PN: “If the vehicle is off policy, then it could reasonably say it shouldn’t operate and could pause itself. But how interesting for a vehicle to be able to say, “Actually, I think I could be off policy, because I’m measuring increased risks”. To me there’s something glorious about that.

“Let’s not think about insurance as the net, but as part of the system that manages the risk. That’s really interesting and it’s going to cause a few recursions because the insurance itself is changing the behaviour, changing the risk.”

With motoring accounting for such a large percentage of insurance, that is “interesting” indeed.

Remote driving rental car delivery trial in Milton Keynes is steppingstone to full self-driving

A solid bridge to self-driving: Fetch trials remote rental car delivery

In this Cars of the Future exclusive, we talk teleoperation as a steppingstone to self-driving with Sandip Gangakhedkar, CTO of Imperium Drive.

The London-based mobility startup made headlines last year when the BBC featured its Fetch rental car delivery trial in Milton Keynes. “It’s driverless but not autonomous,” explained CEO Koosha Kaveh. “There’s still a human involved, but they’ll be sitting in a control centre controlling the vehicle in the same way you’d control a drone.”

In October, Imperium reached the last round of the Zenzic CAM Scale-Up selection process, with Programme Director Mark Cracknell praising “The quality and range of the finalists – testament to the innovative solutions that will make future mobility cleaner, safer and more efficient”.

Human approach to self-driving

Sandip Gangakhedkar, CTO of Imperium Drive re self-driving
Sandip Gangakhedkar, CTO of Imperium Drive

SG: “We were formed in the summer of 2019 to build a new human-in-the-loop approach to autonomous driving. 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 small-scale 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.

Fetch remotedriving rental car delivery trial in Milton Keynes
Fetch remote driving rental car delivery trial in Milton Keynes

“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 socio-economic 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.”

For further info, visit imperiumdrive.com / fetchcar.io

MIT self-driving emissions paper gets wide media attention, not all positive

MIT self-driving CO2 report sparks hyperbolic headlines and an intelligent rebuttal

In January, the respected Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sparked media uproar with its article “Computers that power self-driving cars could be a huge driver of global carbon emissions”.

Indeed, its website boasted of the worldwide coverage, including “MIT study finds huge carbon cost to self-driving cars” in Dezeen, and “Self-driving cars could be a massive source of global carbon emissions” on the BBC.

MIT News self-driving CO2 media coverage, January 2023
MIT News self-driving CO2 media coverage, January 2023

Just one tiny issue. These fall firmly into the category of hyperbolic headlines.

Self-driving emissions prediction

The opening sentence of the report goes in hard: “In the future, the energy needed to run the powerful computers on board a global fleet of autonomous vehicles could generate as many greenhouse gas emissions as all the data centers in the world today.”

Shock news: self-driving cars will need computers… and computers need power! There must be more to it, right? Nope, not really.

The central point is: “that 1 billion autonomous vehicles, each driving for one hour per day with a computer consuming 840 watts, would consume enough energy to generate about the same amount of emissions as data centers currently do.”

Self-driving balance

There’s so much to take issue with, but thankfully – and here’s some great news – this time we don’t have to… because Brad Templeton, who worked on Google’s car team, has already done so, quite brilliantly, in Forbes.

“The study makes poor assumptions, and as such its conclusion is incorrect, but these sorts of studies are often latched onto by the opponents of new technologies due to their confirmation bias, and used as propaganda,” he says.

Spot on sir. For something with such positive potential, self-driving attracts an awful lot of vitriol.

For the record, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) paper behind the headlines – “Data Centers on Wheels: Emissions From Computing Onboard Autonomous Vehicles” – is more tempered, including a commitment “to further analyze and potentially reduce the carbon footprint of AVs”.

Excellent. Maybe pop across to MIT’s own climate dept, where Sergey Paltsev, Deputy Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, says: “Electric cars are actually much, much better in terms of the impact on the climate in comparison to internal combustion vehicles. And in time, that comparative advantage of electric cars is going to grow.”

February 2023: seven winners of commercialising UK self-driving competition to share £81m

UK government backs 7 self-driving projects with multi-million £ grants

Self-driving public transport announcements are like buses, it seems… you wait ages for one and then three come along at once!

In the last two weeks we’ve had the huge news that CAVForth autonomous buses have taken passengers for the first time, and the launch of the UK’s first all-electric autonomous bus service. Follow that!

Ok, today (1 February 2023), the government has confirmed the seven winners of its Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility competition. They’ll each receive a healthy share of £81m in combined government and industry funding.

Self-driving winners

The successful self-driving passenger vehicle and freight projects are, in alphabetical order: CAVForth II, Hub2Hub, Multi-Area Connected Automated Mobility, Project Cambridge Connector, Project Harlander, Sunderland Advanced Mobility Shuttle, and V-CAL.

Business Secretary Grant Shapps on UK self-driving, Feb 2023
Business Secretary Grant Shapps on UK self-driving, Feb 2023

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.”

Transport Secretary Mark Harper on UK self-driving, Feb 2023
Transport Secretary Mark Harper on UK self-driving, Feb 2023

Transport Secretary Mark Harper added: “Self-driving vehicles including buses will positively transform people’s everyday lives – making it easier to get around, access vital services and improve regional connectivity.

“We’re supporting and investing in the safe rollout of this incredible technology to help maximise its full potential, while also creating skilled jobs and boosting growth in this important sector.”

The grants will be provided via the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), jointly run by the Department for Transport and Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

The UK's Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV)

Industry consortia will then match the £40m+ public grant to help British companies seize early opportunities to develop experimental projects into ready-for-market offerings. Each recipient is expected to demonstrate a sustainable commercial service by 2025, with the money allocated as follows…

Self-driving projects

CAVForth II by Fusion Processing, with project partners Stagecoach Group, Alexander Dennis, University of the West of England, and Edinburgh Napier University, will receive £10.4m to launch the world’s first full-sized self-driving bus service in Edinburgh.

Hub2Hub by HVS, with project partners Asda and Fusion Processing, will receive £13.2m to develop a new zero-emissions self-driving HGV for the UK market, delivering never-seen-before levels of efficiency and operational cost savings for logistics operators.

Multi-Area Connected Automated Mobility by Conigital, with project partners the National Exhibition Centre (NEC), Direct Line Group, Coventry City Council, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, University of Warwick, Coventry University, dRisk, IPG Automotive and West Midlands Combined Authority, will receive £15.2m to establish a remote driving control hub to oversee self-driving vehicles operating in Solihull and Coventry.

Project Cambridge Connector by the Greater Cambridge Partnership, including Cambridgeshire County Council, Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and University of Cambridge, along with project partners dRisk, Stagecoach East, IPG Automotive UK, Conigital and Gamma Energy, will receive £17.4m to trial on-demand self-driving taxis across two sites – Cambridge University’s West Cambridge Campus and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

Project Harlander by Belfast Harbour, with partners to be confirmed but expected to be Horiba MIRA, Angoka, BT, and REE Automotive UK, will receive £11m to deploy a self-driving shuttle service around Belfast Harbour. It will be Northern Ireland’s first operationally ready, scalable, and commercially viable deployment of a fully automated shuttle service on mixed-use public roads.

Sunderland Advanced Mobility Shuttle by the City of Sunderland Council, with partners Stagecoach North East, Angoka, Aurrigo (Richmond Design and Marketing), Newcastle University, Swansea University, and BAI Communications, will receive £6m to build and trial a self-driving shuttle service to serve two high-volume destinations – the University of Sunderland and Sunderland Royal Hospital.

V-CAL by the North East Automotive Alliance, with partners Vantec, Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK (NMUK), StreetDrone, Nokia, Newcastle University, Angoka, and Womble Bond Dickinson (UK), will receive £8m to rollout self-driving and remotely piloted HGVs between the Vantec and Nissan sites in Sunderland, including both public and private land.

Self-driving studies

A further £600,000 is also being awarded for feasibility studies to explore how self-driving technology could improve public transport in four parts of the UK currently suffering from congestion.

It includes £142,000 for “Dedicated, Driverless” spaces on the route between Hemel Hempstead and Stansted Airport in Hertfordshire and Essex, £92,000 for an Autonomous Rapid Transit corridor in eastern Cambridge, £151,000 for automated platooning shuttle vehicles using tyre-on-tarmac technology in Birmingham and Solihull, and £200,000 for the Advanced Very Rapid Transit (AVRT) concept in Milton Keynes.

Innovate UK Executive Director for Net Zero, Mike Biddle, said: “The Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) sector is of crucial importance to the UK, with the potential to deliver safer, cleaner and more efficient transport systems across a wide range of settings.

“This latest, multi-year round of government’s Commercialising CAM funds builds on the success of previous collaborative R&D programmes, stimulating innovation to ensure the UK is at the forefront of the transition towards the commercialisation of self-driving services.”

For context, the government press release on the new funding stated: “Self-driving vehicles could revolutionise public transport and passenger travel, especially for those who don’t drive, better connect rural communities and reduce road collisions caused by human error.

“Forecasts predict that by 2035, 40% of new UK car sales will have self-driving capabilities, with a total market value for connected and automated mobility worth £41.7 billion to the UK. This could create nearly 40,000 skilled jobs in connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology.

“The government is also committed to introducing legislation that will enable the safe and timely rollout of self-driving vehicles on UK roads. Under a proposed ‘safety ambition’ for self-driving vehicles to be equivalent in safety to a competent and careful human driver, vehicles will need to meet certain standards to be allowed to ‘self-drive’ on the roads throughout the lifetime of the vehicle. Organisations overseeing self-driving vehicles could face sanctions if standards are not maintained.”

Momentous stuff indeed and rest assured Cars of the Future will keep you updated on their progress.

Self-driving scepticism on ITV’s Loose Women

Self-driving baby buggy gets absolute no from ITV’s Loose Women

Following its appearance at CES 2023, the self-driving Ella “smart stroller” has suffered a hard knockback from Frankie Bridge on ITV’s Loose Women.

The EV-powered pushchair, by Canadian company Glüxkind Technologies, had already been named a “CES Innovation Awards Honoree” when it was profiled on the popular UK lunchtime show in early January.

Self-driving baby buggy on Loose Women

“We all know about driverless cars, but have you heard about the driverless pram?” asked host Ruth Langsford. “It can go up to 5mph and will automatically stop if it goes further than arm’s reach.”

Frankie Bridge responded: “For me, that’s an absolute no. I still don’t trust cars that drive themselves.”

Self-driving stroller

Glüxkind clarifies that the “intelligent hands free strolling” only kicks in when there’s no child in the buggy, so that “parents and caregivers alike can enjoy effortless walks regardless of terrain; uphill, downhill, and even when fully loaded with groceries.”

Glüxkind Ella self-driving baby buggy
Glüxkind Ella self-driving baby buggy

“The development has been driven by our own experience as new parents,” said Co-founder Anne Hunger. “Supporting the next generations of parents with an incredible product is what motivates us every day.”

However well-intentioned, it seems the Ella faces a similarly formidable public acceptance challenge to roadgoing self-driving vehicles.

For further info visit gluxkind.com

Self-driving headline news from CES 2023

CES 2023: Self-driving advances overshadowed by Terminator hero

As has become customary at this time of year, here’s our Cars of the Future review of notable self-driving developments at CES, “the most influential tech event in the world”.

First, it would be remiss not to point out that self-driving impressively made headlines by not stealing the show! For instance, Cleantechnica ran with the headline: “CES 2023 Shies Away From Autonomous Driving Technology”.

Self-driving premiere

That’s maybe a bit harsh. For starters, ZF gave a world premiere to its next generation Level 4 autonomous shuttle, and announced an important new partnership with Beep.

ZF self-driving shuttle announced at CES 2023
ZF self-driving shuttle announced at CES 2023

Integrated into ZF’s autonomous driving system is the Virtual Driver software stack, developed in partnership with Oxfordshire-based Oxbotica. It consists of two major parts, the performance path and the safety path. The safety path monitors situations and defines ‘virtual guardrails’, while the performance path enables smooth driving.

“ZF delivers innovative technologies that contribute to sustainable mobility and help decarbonize the world,” said Dr. Holger Klein, CEO of ZF Group. “Today, we have everything to support our customers with holistic vehicle systems based on advanced high-performance controllers, intelligent sensors, smart actuators, connectivity and cloud solutions, and cutting-edge software and functions.”

The agreement with Beep includes plans for “several thousand” Level 4 shuttles in the US. Joe Moye, CEO of Beep, added: “This vehicle will help expand use cases and meet growing customer demand as we continue to pursue our vision of extending mobility equity and reducing carbon emissions with safe, efficient shared autonomous transportation.”

Self-driving AI

Then there was Korean company AIMMO’s announcement of “the world’s first AI-powered Autonomous Driving Data-as-a-Service” – ADaaS – designed “to overcome the industry-wide problem of excessive data collection that has constrained the progression and commercialisation of AV technologies”.

AIMMO AI-powered Autonomous Driving Data-as-a-Service (ADaaS) for self-driving
AIMMO AI-powered Autonomous Driving Data-as-a-Service (ADaaS) for self-driving

“Over the years, we have seen a huge amount of anticipation around when we will see autonomous vehicles commercialised, but with standards and regulations ever-changing across the world, it is an extremely complex market to navigate,” said AIMMO CEO SeungTaek Oh. ”We believe that the arrival of AIMMO ADaaS is a game-changer for many companies operating in this space.”

There was the small matter of Honda and Sony teaming up to launch a whole new brand, Afeela. It promises “the car of tomorrow”, with first deliveries scheduled for 2026.

Self-driving tech

Plastic Omnium announced the creation of a new division, OP’n Soft, focused on “mobility solutions that are more electric, more connected, more autonomous and more shared”. There’s probably an acronym for that.

“OP’n Soft will enable Plastic Omnium to offer its customers a unique range of integrated solutions and services, such as merging radar data processing software with lighting technologies,” said CEO Laurent Favre.

Plastic O also showcased a new “smart bumper” featuring embedded antennas to deliver “unequaled sensing faculties”, and announced a partnership with startup Greenerwave “to transform body panels into 4D imaging radar to give autonomous cars supervision”.

Another startup, Exwayz, unveiled SLAM – new generation software offering self-localization accurate to 2cm “to simplify and accelerate 3D LiDAR integration into autonomous systems”.

Exwayz SLAM self-localization for self-driving announced at CES 2023
Exwayz SLAM self-localization for self-driving announced at CES 2023

“We are proud to introduce Exwayz SLAM, aimed at saving years in hard software development to autonomous system manufacturers,” said CEO Hassan Bouchiba. “The reality is that autonomy can only happen with robust, accurate, reliable and truly real-time algorithms, which are the critical lacking elements in currently available solutions.”

Terminator star

Perhaps understandably, these advances were somewhat overshadowed by Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger joining BMW CEO Oliver Zipse on-stage to unveil the eye-catching BMW i Vision Dee colour-changing car.

The Dee Movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger on Youtube

When can we expect autonomous vehicles – AVs – in the capital?

Will London be the first UK AV city?

Automated vehicles (AVs) are the emerging superstars of 21st century mobility, from uber-luxurious driverless cars, to more ubiquitous robotaxis and delivery vans.

Self-driving tourism company, Autoura, provides a handy AV rollout tracker, with China having by far the most entries. In the US, robotaxis are already charging for rides in San Francisco and Phoenix.

The UK also pushed on this year. Oxbotica conducted a successful on-road test of its skateboard-like zero-occupancy EV, while CAVForth ran a single-decker autonomous bus in a landmark trial in Scotland. Both made global headlines.

MPs on AVs

As David Wong, senior technology and innovation manager at The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), told The Transport Select Committee in October: “The next step is to remove the safety driver altogether, whether the safety driver is inside the vehicle or remote.”

We face unique challenges, as Inma Martinez, author of The Future of the Automotive Industry, noted: “In the UK you have a lot of 60mph rural roads where you can barely see what’s coming. Then you have London, which is like no other city. It is a costly challenge to test smart road infrastructure without creating congestion.”

Quite so, but existing systems are astronomically expensive. Transport for London (TfL) came close to being bankrupt earlier this year, rescued by last-minute government funding. Paris subsidises its system to the tune of around €8bn a year.

Autonomy’s London City Summit on AVs
Autonomy’s London City Summit on AVs

At Autonomy’s recent London City Summit, the stat of the day was the TfL target that, by 2041, 80% of journeys in the capital should be either by public transport or active travel.

A panel moderated by Professor Nick Reed, chief road safety adviser at National Highways, discussed the potential role of AVs, with Jakob Kammerer, senior product manager at Bosch, commenting: “Our trials show that people are curious about self-driving. Transparency always helps. We explain what we are doing and why – to make improved mobility for everyone. Once they see that a product is good and solves a problem, they will adopt it very quickly.”

Margarethe Theseira, of Bath-based engineering consultancy, Buro Happold, predicted that “the real benefits will come when everything is fully automated”, but worried that “it will be a rich person’s toy”.

Designer Marco Mazzotta, of Heatherwick Studio, mused on how cities might evolve architecturally with widespread AV adoption. He pointed to the huge amount of parking space that could be freed up, asking: “What will we use the space for? Is it going to be public or private?”

Other AVs

A later panel looked at the rapid rise of e-scooter hire and, eventually, these could also be self-driving. Years ago, Paul Priestman, famous for designing Virgin’s Pendolino train, described an e-scooter with a “take me home button”.

Yet there’s growing recognition that, when it comes to cars, the S in SEA (shared, electric and autonomous) is the most problematic.

Who wouldn’t want to own the incredible Audi Grandsphere concept car, advertised on telly during the World Cup? It has a “hands-off” mode, with a steering wheel which folds away, and aims to “redefine high class travelling”. It’s unapologetically exclusive.

Conversely, another Priestman-linked project, Dromos, offers a different mass transit solution, using small AVs running on-demand on dedicated routes.

Dromos AV proposal
Dromos AV proposal for Cambridgeshire

“Users want a ride quality comparable to that of a taxi, but at the price of a bus ticket,” said co-founder Dr Martin Dürr. “Privacy is an important topic, along with convenience and cleanliness.

“Pilots have shown that passengers have very little, if any, desire to share a driverless vehicle with a stranger. Actually, people are willing to pay a premium not to share. We provide capacity at a much better cost per mile.

“Following excellent discussions with the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), we have moved a lot of our attention and value chain to the UK.

“We have proposed a solution for the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority and are in discussion with Manchester, The Ministry for Transport in Scotland and others.”

Please note: a version of this article was first published by the Institute of the Motor Industry’s MotorPro magazine.

Shortlisted by Zenzic for CAM Scale-up, Streetscope’s Collision Hazard Measure can inform safe self-driving deployment.

A new measure for safer vehicles, self-driving or not

In this Cars of the Future exclusive, the co-founders of Pasadena-based Streetscope, Mark Goodstein and David Muyres, explain how their Collision Hazard Measure enables self-driving stakeholders to accelerate deployment with confidence.

DM: “The UK is a leader in automated vehicle (AV) development and we’re in discussion with an array of companies and organisations about demonstrating our capability in the UK environment. That would be a great success point for communicating our value to customers worldwide.

“Our technology evaluates the safe moving of any vehicle, human or machine driven. We treat it as a black box and evaluate how safely it moves amongst hazardous objects in the street scene, using simulation or camera data. Then we create indexes that different industries can use, for example, insurers, vehicle manufacturers, regulators and planners.

“The insurance industry is the one we’re having most conversations with. They want to understand the hazards of new technology vehicles, and now they’re realising we can help with the human-driven side as well. They can use our data to price risk more effectively.

Informing safe self-driving deployment

“Vehicle developers need to answer basic questions like: Am I to safe to deploy yet? They currently don’t have an independent way to objectively measure how safely a vehicle moves, and we can provide that.

“Regulatory is very interesting and it’s nice they’re interested in using our measure to guide future development.

“Infrastructure planning companies can hire us to evaluate a future self-driving route. We can identify high hazard locations and make recommendations to mitigate issues.”

Streetscope Collision Hazard Measure for self-driving
Streetscope Collision Hazard Measure for vehicles incl. self-driving

And you’re talking to vehicle verification bodies too?

MG: “Yes. We’re a start-up, not at scale yet, but all we need is kinematic data, the position of all objects each tick of the clock, from any traffic scene to calculate the hazard posed between the vehicle and all other objects. And we can get that from either simulations or using cameras as data sources. Then we score them based on the Collision Hazard Measure we’ve invented.

“We could use lidar and radar, but those geometric sensors are very expensive. Cameras are ubiquitous, so we’re using them and making a pretty good job of it.

“There’s a school of thought that you can use aggregated data from other drive events using cell phone based sensors, but they lack context. Why did they slam on the brakes? Why did they accelerate so aggressively? There is no correlation to risk.

“We’re trying to get these industries to recognise that the data they’re spending a lot of money on is insufficient, and they’d be better off using our Collision Hazard Measure.”

For further info, visit the Streetscope website.

Huw Merriman chairs Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles on Parliamentlive TV

Transport Select Committee 2022: UK self-driving safety, testing and timescale

The Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles is a big deal for connected and automated mobility (CAM) in the UK, providing both scrutiny and publicity.

These committees are powerful, cross-party, and can require a response from the government. What’s more, The Transport Select Committee is one of the more high profile.

Since 2020, it has been chaired by Huw Merriman, MP for Bexhill and Battle in East Sussex.

Huw Merriman MP chairs Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles
Huw Merriman MP chairs Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles

“On this Committee, we always like to look into the future of science, technology and innovation, and we’re aware that the government has plans to see self-driving vehicles operational by 2025,” he said.

Self-driving inquiry on Parliamentlive

We’ve already covered Professor Paul Newman’s contribution and, of course, we recommend watching the full session on Parliamentlive TV. Who’s got the time though? So please read-on for further highlights from the morning session on Wednesday 26 October 2022.

Here, we cover the initial remarks by Steve Gooding, chief exec of The RAC Foundation, David Wong, senior technology and innovation manager at The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), and Professor Nick Reed, founder of Reed Mobility.

Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles, October 2022
Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles, October 2022

Responding to the question “What is a self-driving vehicle?”, Wong explained that: “A self-driving vehicle, or automated vehicle, to use industry parlance, is a vehicle that’s fitted with an automated driving system capable of performing the entire dynamic driving tasks without human intervention within an operational design domain.”

Reed outlined the updated SAE levels 1-5, noting “They work from an engineering perspective, but they don’t work very well from a communications perspective.”

He went on to highlight the Law Commission’s useful user in charge (UIC) and no user in charge (NUIC) concepts.

Karl McCartney MP then asked about the likely timescale for owning a vehicle with automated systems.

Gooding currently runs a 2007 VW and a 2021 Triumph motorcycle, neither of which have automated features. “I’ll probably be replacing those when we are more comfortable with the electric revolution,” he said.

Reed has a VW Golf with some basic automated features like adaptive cruise control (ACC). “By 2025, it will be possible to use a vehicle that can do some of the driving for you, but I suspect it will be one that I can’t afford,” he said.

Wong highlighted the Mercedes S-Class, which meets the international UN standard for Level 3 conditionally automated driving, and is already available in the German market.

He went on to explain the differences between driver assistance and the higher levels of automation, and the critical issue of people confusing the two.

Gooding chipped in: “There is another way of describing this, which I find helpful, which is to think of it as three levels: hands off, eyes off, nod off.”

Self-driving public understanding

Merriman explained that the inquiry’s name was changed from “autonomous” to “self-driving” to help public understanding.

Changing tack, Ruth Cadbury MP questioned what transport challenges self-driving addresses which other technologies do not.

Reed identified three main areas: 1) safety, with the majority of today’s crashes having human error as a contributing factor, 2) efficiency, for example, from sharing vehicles rather than individually owning them, and 3) accessibility, for example, by making transport more accessible to people with disabilities.

Merriman then asked what testing had taught the industry, particularly in terms of potential pitfalls.

Wong highlighted the UK’s world-leading role in testing, with six CAM testbeds and more than 90 projects involving more than 200 organisations since 2014.

“The next step is to remove the safety driver altogether, whether the safety driver is inside the vehicle or remote,” he said. “Then we can progress to pilot deployment, which is what we’re seeing in the States, in California and also in Arizona. That’s the next challenge.”

Reed added: “One of key things we focus on is the public’s experience and appreciation of the technology – how this can be useful to them.”

Attention then turned to the wider societal and environmental benefits, and we’ll cover that another time soon.

Thatcham’s Avery and others comment on new Trust in Automation self-driving research

Self-driving knowledge gap: Thatcham survey finds 52% of Brits wrongly believe driverless cars are already available

On 8 November, Thatcham, the UK motor insurance industry’s research centre, published the results of a new consumer survey on self-driving.

The Trust in Automation research was conducted by Opinion Matters, and involved questioning 4,000 car owners, half in the UK and half in America.

The headline finding was that 52% of UK drivers mistakenly believe that fully autonomous driving is possible today. In the US, this number rises to 72%.

Thatcham: 50%+ Brits  think full self-driving is already here
Thatcham: 50%+ Brits think full self-driving is already here

Avery on automation

Matthew Avery, chief strategic research officer at Thatcham Research, commented: “Realising the government’s stated safety ambition for automated vehicles is dependent on driver education. This can’t just be lip service.

“With more than half of the UK public believing that autonomous driving is here today, the perception is racing ahead of the reality.

“This demonstrates just how much work needs to be done to set realistic consumer expectations of the first vehicles offering limited self-driving functionality, when they do become available.”

More encouragingly, 73% of UK respondent said they recognised the benefits of emerging automated driving technology.

Thatcham: 73% recognise the benefits of emerging automated driving technology
Thatcham: 73% recognise the benefits of emerging automated driving technology

When asked what they consider to be the key benefits, the most popular option was improved safety (21%), followed by improving mobility for the elderly and disabled (14%) and reduced pollution (8%). Funnily enough, just 3% saw freeing up time to work as an advantage!

“Drivers are beginning to recognise that automation can deliver significant societal benefits in terms of safety, mobility and sustainability,” said Avery.

“However, with safety being such a high priority for drivers, accidents that do occur will be scrutinised under the media microscope, quickly eroding consumer confidence.”

Thatcham noted that, in November 2021, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) launched its guiding principles for automated vehicle marketing.

 “Although safety is seen by many to be a key benefit of automation, trust and confidence need to be nurtured over time,” said Avery.

“It is vital that all industry stakeholders come together to instil trust in automation by ensuring motorists have a firm grasp of their legal obligations and the performance limitations.”

Gooding on self-driving

Commenting on the Trust in Automation findings, Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “This research provides some valuable insights for policy-makers keen to usher in the start of automated driving.

“Given all the hype surrounding automated car technology, particularly coverage of autonomous cars and taxis operating in the US, it isn’t surprising that some people think self-driving cars are already available on the UK market.

“The most important point that this research highlights is the need to ensure drivers understand the limits of automated options when they do first appear on UK roads, particularly where the system requires the driver to stand ready to re-take control.”

Intriguingly, Jonathan Dye, chair of the Automated Driving Insurer Group (ADIG), and head of underwriting at QBE, added: “In addition to education and collaboration across industry sectors, a key element will be the sharing of data and the transparency of what each specific vehicle is capable of at a point in time.

“With some models likely to have the self-driving technology as ‘optional’, or as an ‘over the air update’, meaning it would be possible to change a vehicle’s capabilities overnight, it’s imperative the driver has a full and clear understanding of the vehicle’s limitations post update and that they are adequately protected by purchasing an appropriate insurance product.”

As a final point, we regularly criticise hyperbolic self-driving headlines, so kudos to This Is Money for the informed and nuanced: “Half of motorists incorrectly think you can buy self-driving cars today raising fears some may dangerously overestimate capabilities of existing tech”.

For further info, visit the Thatcham website.