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Cutting-edge self-driving and clean fuel technologies on show at Cenex Expo 2024

Self-driving and clean fuel at Cenex Expo 2024

Cenex Expo 2024 at UTAC Millbrook on 4-5 September, branded ‘Net Zero & Connected Automated Mobility’, featured a welcome emphasis on the latter – self-driving in particular – and showcased vital progress on the former – with electric and hydrogen vehicles of all shapes and sizes, and an array of related products and services.

The first stand you encountered on entry was Beam Connectivity, winner of our inaugural Self-Driving Industry Award for V2X. One of the more eye-catching vehicles outside was a classic red and black Porsche 911 Targa, converted to electric and featuring Beam connected tech.

Beam converted and connected Porsche 911 Targa

Day 1

Headlines from day one included a PAVE UK roundtable featuring new Minister for the Future of Roads, Lilian Greenwood MP, and the Niche Vehicle Network (NVN) awarding its Nick Carpenter Innovation Award to the Callum Skye – a high performance all-electric on- or off-roader powered by a 42kWh battery with an anticipated 170-mile range.

NVN awards 2024 Nick Carpenter Innovation Award to Callum Skye

“The potential embedded CO2 reductions that have been realised through the use of sustainable materials could be immediately transferrable to other vehicles across the niche sector,” said NVN Programme Director, Scott Thompson. “Seeing the potential offered by UK designed ultra-fast battery technology is really exciting too.”

Full disclosure: we weren’t actually there on the first day, but fortunately The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) captured these video highlights:

APC’s Cenex Expo 2024 Day 1 Highlights

We can, however, provide an in-depth report into the self-driving-related highlights from the Thursday.

Day 2

Apart from Beam, other standout CAM exhibitors included Aesin, Innovate UK, WMG and Fusion Processing, which displayed its new Automated Tow Tractor, set to hit the market in 2025.

“We are fast approaching a pivotal moment in the evolution of transportation,” said Jim Hutchinson, CEO of Fusion Processing. “The combination of our technology progress and the supportive legal environment mean that it’s time for operators of commercial vehicle fleets to plan for the availability of these vehicles over the next three to four years – much sooner than previously expected.”

We spent most of the day in the ‘CAM Main Plenary’, where notable attendees included #SDIA24 judge Dr Nick Reed, Amy Rowley of BSI, Steve Berry and Clem Robertson of Angoka, Mi-Link project manager John McNicol, and Nick South, Patent Attorney at AA Thornton.

Cenex Expo 2024 CAM Main Plenary — Paul Bhatia of ESA Space Solutions at Cenex Expo 2024

The first session, ‘Scaling CAM Infrastructure’ was chaired by Andrea Reacroft, Digital Transport Programme Delivery Manager at Tees Valley Combined Authority, and featured Jonathan Eaton of The UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN), Mili Naik of Zenzic, James Long of London’s Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL) and Paul Bhatia of ESA Space Solutions.

Eaton highlighted not only the AV Act but also the new Electronic Trade Documents Act as vital in enabling the seamless movement of goods between taxable zones.

“We need to pull together all the clear business models and use cases to drive investment in the connected infrastructure to support CAM,” he said, citing the logistics efficiency benchmark of taking 10 minutes to travel 10 miles (10-10).

Jonathan Eaton of UKTIN at Cenex Expo 2024 - 10 in 10 — UKTIN at Cenex Expo 2024 – 10 in 10

Naik opened with the quote by mathematician Clive Humby that “data is the new oil”, while Long outlined some of the amazing testing at SMLL, and, as an example of the detail, referenced The Met Office’s research into sensor interpretation of different sized raindrops.

Noting that here in 2024 we are still talking about a minimum viable connected infrastructure to enable large scale CAM deployment, he put it bluntly: “The coverage is not where it needs to be”, adding that the 3G switch-off is also causing issues for older intelligent transport systems.

Bhatia engagingly focussed on space tech and the importance of satellite communications, saying: “Look to the future and make 6G an integral part of the CAM ecosystem. Satellite is part of the answer for both assisted and automated driving – one of the multiple on- and off-vehicle technologies that brings the necessary robustness.”

ESA Space Solutions at Cenex Expo 2024 - 6G — ESA Space Solutions at Cenex Expo 2024 – 6G

One of the best things about big events is they tend to provide a welcome reminder of the basics – why self-driving is so important. Among other benefits, it can help us to tackle global warning.

Deniz Çetin of Karsan pointed us to the latest deeply worrying figures from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission: Summer 2024 was the hottest on record, both globally and for Europe.

Using the example of Karsan’s Autonomous e-ATAK, which has been carrying ticketed passengers in open traffic in Stavanger, Norway, since 2022, Çetin said: “People these days can’t believe that once there were lift operators. You just don’t need them now, and it will be the same with drivers and autonomous vehicles.”

Graphic illustration of congestion-busting potential of self-driving shuttles over robotaxis

Jim Fleming, of Fusion, predicted the successful commercialisation of CAM within two years. “The UK is moving onto a leadership position in the legal structure,” he said. “Local authorities can take on more responsibility and we need to get the message out that this is coming very soon.”

In a Q&A, we discussed the gridlock-solving advantages of autonomous shuttles over robotaxis, with Ewan Murdoch, of Arup, raising ‘the perception danger of removing the safety driver’ – a subject we’d return to after lunch.

Self-driving supply chain

Following a dash around the impressive vehicle line-ups outside, we returned for a wide-ranging exploration of the CAM supply chain, chaired by David Webb of CCAV, and featuring Teodora Demirova of Zenzic, Dean Zabrieszach of Ohmio, and Dr Martin Dürr of Dromos.

Emphasising the UK’s strength in intellectual property (IP), Demirova asserted that the top high value opportunities in CAM include: Research and technology organisation (RTO), Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) / Authorised Self-Driving Entity (ASDE), software and hardware, test services, and insurance and legal.

Zenzic's top high value opportunities in CAM — Zenzic’s top high value opportunities in CAM

Zabrieszach explained how Ohmio got into AV, having previously specialised in intelligent highway signage. He namechecked AXA insurance and addressed the safety driver question head-on, saying “Autonomy is not autonomy if you have a driver on board.”

Ohmio’s new shuttle – on display in the concourse – attracted a lot of attention and a new public road trial will begin in Milton Keynes later this year. We’ve put our name down to have a go in that as soon as possible!

Dr Martin Dürr focussed first on value for money, noting that the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco costs over $5 billion a year to run, with much of this coming from taxpayer subsidises.

The Dromos system, he claimed, delivers vastly better capital expenditure (CapEx) and operating expenditure (Opex) performance, not only than legacy systems like BART, but also than the new autonomous shuttle alternatives.

“Our smaller vehicles help to overcome the personal safety fears,” he said. “With the added advantage that there is no strict timetable to keep to, so people can take as long as they need to board and alight.”

Operationalising the AV Act

It wouldn’t be a self-driving event without the percentage of road ‘accidents’ involving human error getting a mention. According to Swapnil Pathak, Head of UK Business Development at BlueBinaries, the latest research puts it at 94%.

The final session of the day was a panel discussion on ‘Operationalising the Automated Vehicles Act – Underpinning Secondary Legislation with Research Evidence’, hosted by Ben Gardner, of Shoosmiths, and featuring Prof. Siddartha Khastgir of WMG, Jamie Hodsdon of Oxa, Daniel Quirke of Wayve, and Pablo Rodriguez Corbacho of Applus IDIADA.

“We need to act on the Act, to build on it with secondary legislation, and to continue pushing the conversations at UN level,” said Khastgir.

Much of the debate focused on the requirements for on-road testing without a safety driver, dubbed ‘advanced testing’, before moving to full commercial approval.

Thanks to all involved and apologies to those we missed – there was a lot of great cutting-edge tech on show.

For further info about this event please visit the Cenex Expo website

Steven Spieczny of Kognic gives us the lowdown on sensor-fusion annotation for ADAS and self-driving…

Self-driving safety accelerator: Kognic turns sensor-fusion into datasets you can trust

Launched five years ago and already working with household-name OEMs, Gothenburg-based Kognic is very much one to watch in the fast-growing self-driving perception software sector.

Cars of the Future spoke to Vice President of Marketing, Steven Spieczny, to find out about the sensor-fusion annotation platform everyone’s talking about…

Steven Spieczny is Vice President of Marketing at Kognic

“Kognic was founded by two technologists from the machine learning space to address the need for accurate training data for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS).

“We have a quickly built-up a diverse customer base, including global vehicle manufacturers such as Volvo Cars/Zenseact, Tier 1 suppliers like Bosch, Continental and Qualcomm, and some very innovate start-ups such as Kodiak, a leader in autonomous for commercial trucking.

“We process data from cars, vans, trucks, drones and robots, and feed it into our cloud-based software platform. Information from cameras, lidar, radar, gets pulled into one comprehensive dataset.

“From there, everything that can be sensed is defined and labelled – that’s a road sign, that’s a pedestrian sitting on a bench, that’s a big truck straight ahead!

Kognic annotation

“This tagging process is called annotation. You see it quite a bit in healthcare, for example, to automatically flag broken bones on scans. In automotive, the level of complexity is much higher because the data we’re capturing is constantly changing, literally a moving picture.

“We help our customers to manage and curate this data so they can, in turn, use these datasets to power their AI products through model validation and tracking of performance.

“For ADAS, it started with lane marking recognition, where there are a lot of variables. Then you expand the data domain, which gets you these rare occurrences. For instance, light source object detection (LSOD) is a crucial use case where the reflection of a vehicle must be distinguished from an actual vehicle on the road.

Kognic point cloud for ADAS and self-driving with pedestrians and vehicles — Kognic point cloud with pedestrians and vehicles

“Obviously, in the AV industry, there’s been a fair bit of turmoil over the last few years for consumer vehicle applications. This gave way to a parallel focus on commercial trucking.

“One of the early assessments was that long-haul trucking was the perfect use case – long straight roads, no pedestrians. It turns out this is actually a really hard dynamic to get right – high speeds, sensor range limitations and long stopping distances, especially when fully loaded, contribute to a similarly complex situation.

“Kodiak is one of our trucking customers in the US. They’re doing about 70,000 autonomous miles a month now, all the way from California down through the Southwest into Texas.

“They’re a success story in a sector which, like robotaxis, has seen a lot of ups and downs. Kodiak supply a top to bottom autonomous stack, and we sit behind that, pushing and pulling all this sensor data to enable their machine learning to make better decisions.

Kognic pre-annotation

“The ascension of the data scientist is important here, along with the new depth of technology around self-supervised learning, all these very geeky things.

“Data is the fuel for Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) – this idea of programming with data, rather than traditional coding. Our software enables the fusion of data from various sensors and the way we pre-annotate helps to make the whole process more efficient and cost-effective. That’s our USP.

Kognic pre-annotation for ADAS and self-driving

“In the future, we believe, as many do, that everything that moves will have some form of autonomy. The whole world of AI is very dynamic, particularly with regards to self-driving cars because of the vast amount of data involved.

“For something like ChatGPT, 80% accuracy might be ok. For something as safety critical as self-driving, it has to be 99.9%. The principal is the same though – more inputs in order for the machine to learn on its own and be smarter about the outputs.

Sensor-fusion for self-driving

“We agree with Wayve that Embodied AI is the great North Star, but we’re not there yet. It’s unrealistic for the market to assume that we’re quickly going to jump to level 5 autonomy. We’re going to have to build up the capability, and that’s a big challenge.

“Concurrent to all this is the transition to the software defined vehicle (SDV). There’s a Mercedes model which is approved for level 3 in certain conditions in Germany. In the UK, Ford’s BlueCruise assisted driving system enables hands-off on some motorways.

“In a nutshell, the better your data, the better your models will be, and that will ultimately result in better user experiences. We call this alignment to expectation, and safety is the biggest issue.

“The self-driving industry needs a way to accurately calibrate and merge senor data to provide the machine with a very specific picture about what it is seeing at any given time. Kognic has that annotation platform to produce what is needed.”

For further info see Kognic.com

Turbo-charging UK self-driving SMEs: Zenzic announces 2024 CAM Scale-Up winners

To accelerate self-driving in the UK, Zenzic has announced six more exceptional SMEs to receive up to £100k each as part of its prestigious CAM Scale-Up programme.

22 self-driving innovators have been supported by the programme since 2020. This is the fifth ‘cohort’, and we’ve covered the journeys of multiple 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 winners here on Cars of the Future.

The six 2024 winners, in alphabetical order, are:

Blueskeye AI – Nottingham-based company building clinical grade facial recognition technology for fatigue detection.

Deontic UK –London-based large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence to help integrate regulatory frameworks into self-driving technology.

Maaind – London-based company using speech recognition, computer vision and smart device readings to mitigate stress-related driving accidents.

Moonbility – London-based company using CCTV to provide real-time information about available wheelchair bays on buses.

Opteran – Headquartered in London, provides neuromorphic software to enable machines to mimic the human brain’s driving abilities.

Saif Syst ems – Cambridge-based provider of real-time safety monitoring software on proprietary hardware e.g. to stop systems operating outside of constraints.

Self-driving funding

Supported by the government’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), and in partnership with tech start-up supporter Plug and Play, a key benefit of CAM Scale-Up UK success is access to the world-leading facilities of CAM Testbed UK, which now includes Catesby Tunnel and Tees Valley.

Gamma working on Cambridge self-driving taxi trial 2024 — CAM Scale-Up UK 2023 winner Gamma Energy is now a partner in the Project Cambridge Connector on-demand self-driving taxi trial

Mark Cracknell, Programme Director at Zenzic, said: “CAM Scale-Up UK is not just about providing funding to businesses, it’s very much a wrap-around support programme which provides those successful with everything they need to truly realise their potential.

“Through CAM Testbed UK, they can test their solutions in as close to real-life scenarios as possible and accelerate their route to market. All the while picking the brains of some of the brightest minds in industry.”

For further info on the CAM Scale-Up UK programme, please see the Zenzic website.

Corey Clothier, Co-founder of ARIBO, will once again be on the judging panel for the Self-Driving Industry Awards, focussed on AV strategy, development and deployment

Self-Driving Industry Awards 2024: Meet the Judges – Corey Clothier, ARIBO

World-renowned self-driving vehicle expert, Corey Clothier, co-founded ARIBO in 2016 to assist new operators with AV strategy and help AV developers grow into new markets.

“I’m very happy to be judging the Self-Driving Industry Awards again,” he said. “Being US-based, I bring an international perspective from one of the most advanced AV markets.”

For over 15 years now, Corey has been helping global cities and pretty much anyone with a campus to realize the benefits of AVs – to reduce costs and risks by embracing autonomy.

“It’s not just about the vehicle, it’s about setting up the entire ecosystem, from field engineering and testing, to measuring performance and managing systems,” he said.

Self-driving projects

Recent projects include evaluating AV support for mining in South America, supporting automated trucking adoption with the Canadian forestry industry, advising on an autonomous bus for a US national park, and taking a fractional leadership role as Global Automated Mobility Lead at sustainable design and engineering specialist, Arcadis.

“We’ve also been looking into automated transit network applications, working with Dromos, who won your Design Award last year, and other great start-ups,” he said.

“Airside operations are also really interesting, and we’ve been working with airports, airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to plan for and adopt automated vehicle systems. We’ll be making an exciting announcement on that very soon.”

Self-driving experts - Aribo — Self-driving strategy, development and deployment experts – Aribo

Following Uber’s investment in Wayve, we ask: who will own self-driving cars?

Will I buy a self-driving car?

Sounds like a simple enough question, right? Actually, predicting who will own self-driving cars takes us to the complicated intersection of the connected, automated, shared and electric megatrends.

For many of us born last century, a car will be the second most expensive thing we ever buy, after a house. With our hearts ruling our heads, we dismissed the sage advice of oil baron Paul Getty – “If it appreciates, buy it. If it depreciates, lease it.” – for the love of a particular model in our favourite colour.

These days, thanks to modern finance products such as Personal Contract Purchase (PCP), we get the best of both worlds – the option after three years to purchase outright or return it to the lender, and repeat. No wonder the UK vehicle parc hit an all-time high of over 41 million last year.

SMMT new car registration figures, July 2024

However, within the SMMT’s new car registration figures, there’s a notable trend: the growth is driven by fleets, with both private buyer and business registrations well down. What’s going on?

Access or ownership

A 2023 McKinsey Mobility Consumer Pulse survey of 4,000 French, German and UK respondents provides a clue. It found that 60% owned a car, and 80% had regular access to one – an important distinction, and demographics come into play.

As Doug Jenkins, Motor Technical Risk Manager at AXA Insurance, has pointed out: “In my day, passing your test and getting your first car was all about mobility. Young people still want to get from A to B, but they want choices – they’re not so worried about ownership.”

Temporary car insurance provider, Cuvva, provides some compelling statistics: the average car owner in Outer London will spend £3,502 a year on running costs alone (insurance, fuel, MOT, tax and maintenance), and 31% of London car owners use their vehicle less than 10 times a month.

The unsurprising result is, as Andrew Smith, managing director of vehicle rental firm Sixt, told The Telegraph: “We see customers now who come to us every Friday and rent a car just for the weekend.”

So, less outright ownership and better short-term access options already. Now, let’s turn our attention to how self-driving might change the game.

In his April 2024 industry update, Scaling Self-driving Technology on the Path to Ubiquity, the CEO of Oxa, Gavin Jackson, wrote: “There’s disagreement over the sectors to focus on first, and no international consensus yet on what constitutes a safe autonomous vehicle system.

“Momentum, however, is picking up. The UK’s new Automated Vehicles Act will lead to regulations overseeing the in-use safety of vehicle fleets, and a host of other things.”

Two important takeaways there. First, the ubiquity; once self-driving tech is proven, it will be everywhere – from privately owned cars to vans, buses and HGVs. Second, the emphasis on fleet.

Self-driving fleets

To answer the question directly, large numbers of self-driving cars will be owned by robotaxi companies (those with a UK No User-in-Charge operator licence, as per the Law Commission’s recommendations). Which makes Uber’s recent investment in Wayve all the more interesting.

“Wayve is building a ‘general purpose’ driving Al that can power all levels of driving automation in any type of vehicle, anywhere in the world,” said CEO and inaugural Self-Driving Industry Award winner, Alex Kendall.

“I’m excited to be teaming up with Uber to massively ramp up our AI’s fleet learning, ensuring our AV technology is safe and ready for global deployment across Uber’s network. Together, we’re excited to work with automotive OEMs to bring autonomous driving technologies to consumers sooner.”

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, added:“Uber and Wayve share a vision of reimagining mobility. Wayve’s advanced Embodied AI approach holds a ton of promise as we work towards a world where modern vehicles are shared, electric and autonomous.”

Shared vehicles, by their nature, are utilitarian, and rarely set pulses racing. That’s why experts like Steve Gooding, of the RAC Foundation, and Tom Stringer, Product Strategy Director at JLR, insist that self-driving will not signal the end of personal ownership, far from it.

“Are you really going to ditch all those bespoke choices, and the convenience of knowing the car is at your personal beck-and-call, because you’re going to be able to summon a self-driving vehicle?” Gooding asks.

Self-driving cars will clearly be an attractive proposition for those currently unable to drive. Ownership patterns will be different in urban and rural areas, and there could well be regulatory curveballs like road charging or incentives for multi-occupancy.

In any case, those with the deepest pockets will still treat themselves to amazing cars like the Rolls-Royce 103EX concept. For the majority, as with electric vehicles (EVs), fleet operators and leasing companies will shoulder much of the early adopter risk.

The luxurious Rolls-Royce 103EX concept with self-driving capabilities. — The luxurious Rolls-Royce 103EX concept with self-driving capabilities (credit: James Lipman)

Please note: the author produced an earlier version of this article for The Institute of the Motor Industry’s MotorPro magazine.

Cars Of The Future on an exceptional self-driving roundtable feat. road safety campaigner Meera Naran MBE and Oxa co-founder Prof Paul Newman CBE.

Set the self-driving safety bar high: Oxa demands explainability in data sharing

As well as a long-awaited first ever ride in a self-driving car on public roads in the UK, our recent visit to Oxa featured an exceptional roundtable discussion on rollout, regulation and, above all, safety.

It featured independent road safety campaigner and trustee of Brake, Meera Naran MBE, self-driving expert and Chief Road Safety Adviser to National Highways, Dr Nick Reed, and senior representatives of Oxa including Autonomy Systems and Regulatory Expert, Bryn Balcombe, Director of Safety Assurance, Camilla Fowler, Head of Global Regulatory Affairs, Jamie Hodsdon, and co-founder and CTO, Professor Paul Newman.

To set the scene, numerous messages from friends ahead of the event referred to the likelihood of a crash on the demo – a timely reminder of the consumer confidence challenge. And here we had leading proponents of self-driving in the same room as someone who’s young son, Dev, was killed in a collision with a lorry on a smart motorway.

Independent road safety campaigner, Meera Naran MBE, at Oxa — Independent road safety campaigner, Meera Naran MBE, had questions for Oxa

Naran, having also just had her first ever trip in a self-driving car, explained that Dev was passionate about technology, and cars in particular. “I see value in the potential of self-driving,” she said. “It means that, in 20 years’ time, my daughter, who is four, is going to be safer.” It wasn’t an average discussion. It was no holds barred…

Self-driving safety

PN: “We specialise in self-driving software – providing it to others, like the Beep shuttles in Florida – but we also run a small fleet of vehicles to prove our work in different environments.

“We think it is much smarter to assure a certain vehicle for a particular route, say the Number 7 bus, rather than claiming ‘We can drive everywhere’. From nowhere to everywhere overnight? That sounds like a stretch. Autonomy should run first where it fits best, and you get to ‘everywhere’ by doing lots of ‘somewheres’.

“Be open; admit that sometimes the technology will get it wrong, and design it to fail safely. Incidents like we saw with Cruise in San Francisco last year deserve transparency, an honest explanation. That’s why we have Oxa YellowBird, our canary in the autonomy coal mine, which independently monitors Oxa Driver to ensure driving remains careful and competent at all times.

Self-driving expert and co-founder of Oxa, Prof. Paul Newman CBE, in discussion with Meera Naran — Co-founder of Oxa, Prof. Paul Newman CBE, in discussion with Meera Naran

“YellowBird is all about explainability of Oxa Driver behaviour and is designed to support the AV Act requirement for in-use monitoring. The key question is: What data do you need to share with others to prove your vehicle is operating safely?

“There’s no intellectual property (IP) in the YellowBird output, but we will happily share data to demonstrate how and why events unfolded in a certain way. That has to be the price of entry to operate in this space. The safety bar has to be high. That’s what the public expect.”

NR: “Self-driving cars must be at least as safe as a good human driver, that’s enshrined in the AV Act, so we need a mechanism to hold them to account.”

Careful & Competent

CF: “The term ‘careful and competent’ has appeared in Road Safety Acts since the 1980s. There is some case law, but it has always been hugely subjective. Now, thanks to Labour and peer amendments ensuring its inclusion in the AV Act, we get to define what ‘careful and competent’ actually means for self-driving vehicles. This could deliver a step-change in road safety.”

JH: “Road safety is a global issue, but number of fatalities alone feels like a very blunt metric. The public expect AVs to be careful and competent, but what data do regulators need to demonstrate that? For example, the Highway Code says cars overtaking cyclists should leave a 1.5m gap, but sometimes it might be essential for the vehicle to breach that to avoid a collision. However, in those cases, it must provide data to explain why it made that decision and that’s what YellowBird is for.”

Oxa's Bryn Balcombe with Neil Kennett on a self-driving test ride — Oxa’s Bryn Balcombe with Neil Kennett on a self-driving test ride

BB: “In-use monitoring brings so many benefits. Not just blackbox recordings for crash investigation, as we see in aviation, but also for detecting and learning from near-miss events. As automotive transitions from a product industry to a service industry it’s clear that approval tests for the product safety will need to be supplemented with continual in-use monitoring for service safety – to ensure incidents that require grounding of a fleet can be detected and safety issues resolved before service resumes.”

MN: “I am encouraged by the focus on safety, and only using this for routes from A to B, as opposed to everywhere, sounds very sensible.”

PN: “That’s made my day. We call it route qualification. The other keys are transparency and explainability. When a fault occurs, you must provide evidence and demonstrate how you have fixed it.”

Oxa continue to make the case for increased mandatory data sharing to the UK government and at UNECE level. The fact they were so open with a journalist, an academic and a road safety campaigner speaks volumes.

E-Transit Minibus

As an added bonus, the last few hours of the day of were spent at nearby Culham Science Centre, part of the CCAV, Innovate and Zenzic-backed CAM Testbed UK network, and home to the Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) test facility.

There, we were given exclusive first sight of Oxa’s new E-Transit Minibus. With a background in motorsport engineering, project lead Holly Watson Nall explained that Oxa will operate the new service, as well as providing the vehicles, on a soon-to-be announced route covering both public and private roads.

“In the UK?” we asked, several times. Oxa would neither confirm nor deny, but it is right-hand drive so…

Neil Kennett, Meera Naran MBE and Dr Nick Reed with Oxa’s new self-driving E-Transit Minibus — Neil Kennett, Meera Naran and Nick Reed with Oxa’s self-driving E-Transit Minibus

Cars Of The Future editor Neil Kennett goes self-driving in the UK, courtesy of Oxa.

Editor’s Comment: Finally, my 1st ever ride in a self-driving car on public roads in the UK – thanks Oxa!

At approximately 10.30am local time on Tuesday 13 August 2024, with an average left turn in a Ford Mondeo, I reached a momentous personal milestone. After publishing over 300,000 words on the subject, I finally got to ride in a self-driving car on public roads in the UK. Excitement level off the chart!

With autonomy systems expert Bryn Balcombe for company, the turn out of the Oxford business park was noteworthy only for the fact that the road wasn’t completely clear – there was oncoming traffic, but I’d have gone and the Oxa software agreed.

On-road self-driving

Within seconds we were taking the middle of three lanes up to a busy roundabout, pausing momentarily while an aggressive driver steamed up our inside. From there on in, it went remarkably smoothly. A-roads and B-roads, cars, vans, buses and HGVs, learner drivers, cyclists and pedestrians – all handled without fuss, nothing outrageous to report.

Oxa self-driving software - "Autonomy is available" — Oxa self-driving software – “Autonomy is available”

You begin by analysing every tiny decision, as if the car were taking its driving test. Yes, the technology is amazing, but most humans get from A to B multiple times a day, for years on end, without major incident, so that must mean we’re also pretty amazing, right?

Ross the cameraman confided afterwards that it was his first time in a self-driving car too. He agreed that the presence of ROSPA gold standard safety driver Tristan was reassuring, but overall felt very comfortable with the experience.

Oxa self-driving car with safety driver, Aug 2024 — Oxa self-driving car with safety driver

So, there you have it; second top item on the bucket list, tick. Video to follow, along with details of an exceptional roundtable discussion and an exclusive first glimpse of Oxa’s new E-Transit Minibus.

Alex Bainbridge, Founder and CEO of Autoura, will once again be on the judging panel for the Self-Driving Industry Awards, focussed on commercialisation and customer experience

Self-Driving Industry Awards 2024 – meet the judges: Alex Bainbridge

After selling online reservation service TourCMS in 2015, tourism entrepreneur Alex Bainbridge launched Autoura to build digital sightseeing products specifically for self-driving vehicles.

“I’m delighted to be involved in judging the Self-Driving Industry Awards again,” he said. “While the other judges have incredible technical expertise, I’m more focussed on successful commercialisation and the customer experience.

“These might be Cars of the Future awards, but for the tourism industry, particularly for Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) making decisions about vehicle purchases, this is a live issue today. Luxurious coaches pay for themselves over 7-15 years, and over that timescale we’re going to see widescale rollout of self-driving buses, smaller shuttles and cars.

Self-driving tourism

“From a tourist’s perspective, when you remove the driver, you need a new way to answer questions like: ‘What’s happening in town today?’ or ‘Where should we go for dinner?’. Our AI characters deliver tourism experiences both within vehicles and outside them, so they work for pedestrians and cyclists as well.

Sahra was the first self-driving tour guide created by Autoura

“We’re currently testing it as a consumer product in the US. We’re also in discussion with AV operators because distribution agreements would obviously make the whole thing more streamlined. Autoura now has 30 autonomous vehicle tourism experiences available to try using publicly available robotaxis such as Waymo in San Francisco.

“In the not-too-distant future, human-driven vehicles will become ever rarer and self-driving operators will be in competition with each other. They’ll have to differentiate their offerings, and that’s something the tourism industry has traditionally been very good at.

“Taking a sightseeing trip in a self-driving car, or a small electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, as opposed to a coach, is a huge change. The interaction can be much more personalised – high quality real-world experiences at a very affordable price point, all enabled by amazing connected and automated vehicle technologies.

“I look forward to highlighting those who’ve made the most progress across all vital areas, from software to regulation, since last year’s inaugural awards.”

Autoura - digital sightseeing products designed specifically for self-driving — Autoura – digital sightseeing products designed specifically for self-driving

In our Zenzic CAM Creator interview with Alex way back in 2020 he predicted “The transition to autonomous will start with CAVs running routes like buses”.

Last November we were delighted to present our inaugural Self-Driving Vehicle of the Year Award to Project CAVForth… a fleet of five single-decker, low-emission Stagecoach buses which have been taking fares in Scotland daily since May 2023.

FocalPoint’s automotive Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) tech for ADAS and self-driving

European Space Agency supports FocalPoint in pioneering London automotive GNSS project

Supported by the European Space Agency (ESA), FocalPoint has developed a new Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver to demonstrate its S-GNSS Auto software.

Last year we covered how the Cambridge-based company’s S-GNSS Auto solution helps to improve positioning accuracy in urban environments, as well as being more resilient to radio frequency (RF) spoofing attacks – with clear benefits for self-driving. Now, thanks to ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP), it can evidence this in real-time.

Gonzalo Martin de Mercado, NAVISP Element 2 Manager at ESA, said: “We are very proud to have supported FocalPoint in developing their S-GNSS receiver. We are confident this technology will have significant growth potential in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and even in consumer markets like smartphones and wearables.”

GNSS for self-driving

Cars of the Future spoke to FocalPoint CEO, Scott Pomerantz, and VP of Business Development, Manuel del Castillo, to find out more…

Automotive GNSS expert and CEO of FocalPoint, Scott Pomerantz

SP: “ESA’s NAVISP is a key enabler for innovation in the European positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) landscape. This newly developed receiver will support our commercialisation strategy, underpinning IP development and providing that much-needed proof of impact.

“Being able to rely on the accuracy of GNSS is key for ADAS and automated driving systems. Our Supercorrelation technology has already won multiple awards, including the Business Innovation Award from the Institute of Physics in 2023.

“By determining the arrival angle of satellite signals, permitting only the line-of-sight signals and ignoring reflections, it will help reduce the number of accidents worldwide. All the major automotive manufacturers are interested.”

VP of Business Development at FocalPoint, Manuel del Castillo

MdC: “Applying for ESA NAVISP support and funding proved to be extremely successful for FocalPoint. The project ran for two years. We hit milestones throughout the period, and we have just submitted our final paper and made our closing presentation.

“The main goal was to develop our own software defined receiver to prove the commercial implementation of our S-GNSS software – our patented, chip-set level technology which enhances the positioning performance of a consumer-grade GNSS receiver.

“Our Supercorrelation technology has several functions in the GNSS receivers for the automotive autonomy industry. GNSS’s core function is to provide the essential cross-checking of the accuracy and reliability of the sensors, cameras and radars, which can become very challenging, particularly in urban areas.

“As the only sensor capable of determining the vehicle’s absolute position anywhere on earth, as well as the sensor typically used to discipline inertial sensors, enhancing the reliability of the GNSS receiver itself is a logical first step to help overcome the typical challenges facing today’s traditional GNSS receivers.

“Needless to say, in the automotive sector we want GNSS to be accurate to the lane at least, but often that doesn’t happen without our technology. Across many routes in inner city London, around Canary Wharf, where there are lots of very tall buildings, and therefore a huge number of reflections, in testing without Supercorrelation, many times the positions computed were on the pavement or even inside buildings.

“The first baseline of performance for our tests was a dual frequency L1 and L5 commercial receiver, which represents the state-of-the-art. The second baseline was our own GNSS software defined radio (SDR) without Supercorrelation. When applying Supercorrelation, the results were always within the correct lane, clearly demonstrating a level of accuracy that’s essential for advancing ADAS functionality.

FocalPoint test results: true trajectory (green) versus results with S-GNSS (blue) and without (red). — FocalPoint testing: true trajectory (green) versus results with S-GNSS (blue) and without (red).

“Another core benefit we have been able to demonstrate is the enhanced urban accuracy irrespective of the quality of the antenna used. We can compute very accurate positions even with lower quality antennas.

“In many new cars the manufacturers try to embed the antennas for aesthetic reasons, which unfortunately can compromise the performance. The enhancement of Supercorrelation facilitates a sensitivity boost in the GNSS receiver.

Resistance to spoofing

“Finally, for advancing ADAS and self-driving vehicles, it is critical that the GPS is resistant to spoofing attacks, so rejecting those is the third major benefit that the addition of Supercorrelation brings to the chip.

“We’re now discussing a phase two with ESA to further develop new Supercorrelation technologies, including its application to Real Time Kinematic (RTK) and Precise Point Positioning (PPP) GNSS correction services. Early research has shown dramatic improvement of these services, but with ESA’s backing, we will bring these to market even sooner.

“The aspect of resistance to spoofing attacks could be hugely valuable as all cars from a given manufacturer could be constantly monitoring the environment and sharing this data between them, a crowdsourcing effort to increase the reliability of GNSS for automotive.”

Resistance to spoofing increases the reliability of GNSS.

SP: “You covered our strategic investment from General Motors last year and we will definitely be doing more testing in London because that’s interesting for many car manufacturers, particularly JLR. We’ve been testing in Seoul, in a place renowned for its modern skyscrapers and office buildings – an area critical to Seoul’s urban landscape called Teheran-ro in Gangnam, a challenging landscape that is local to Hyundai and Kia.

“We’ve also been testing in Tokyo’s skyscraper landscape, results that will be of interest for brands including Suzuki, Subaru, Nissan and Toyota, and also in Frankfurt and the Black Forest for brands including BMW, Mercedes and Audi. Of course we’ll keep testing in Michigan and San Francisco, home of US automotive OEMs. It is all commercially driven, to prove that we can overcome the challenges associated with GNSS for these manufacturers in their own test environments.

“Open sky is relatively easy, but the minute you move into urban areas, motorways with big barriers, or roads with deep foliage, you can often find yourself with reduced GPS accuracy. Similarly, if, say L1 were spoofed and the network went down, and you didn’t have an L5 acquisition capability, that could be a problem, so we need to be multi-band.

“The whole spoofing and jamming piece has been getting a lot of press and our three buzzwords are mitigation, identification and localization. This will be a theme for every car maker – to establish whether there was an error on their side that requires correcting, or whether it truly was due to a bad actor. In the case of the latter, how did that play out and what are the liabilities? FocalPoint provides the fundamental data.”

John Birtwistle of First Bus on the groundbreaking Mi-Link autonomous vehicle project – technology, terminology and passenger reactions.

All about Mi-Link – The UK’s 1st fully electric autonomous bus route

John Birtwistle, Head of Policy at First Bus, gives us the lowdown on the Milton Park self-driving bus trial – their preference for the term “autonomous”, how the technology coped with challenging scenarios, passengers’ positive reactions, and the evolving UK legislative framework.

JB: “The Mi-Link project was very successful – the UK’s first ever fully electric autonomous bus route. Partially funded by Innovate UK and the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), it was the culmination of five years’ work by a consortium including Fusion Processing and Oxfordshire County Council.

“The aim at the outset was to determine whether the concept of autonomous vehicles could be applied to public transport, not in some sterile environment but in real-world scenarios with mixed traffic, carrying the general public in exactly the same way as we would with a conventional bus.

“The first route ran around the business park itself, a little circular service just to prove the concept. The second route then linked the business park to Didcot Parkway railway station, including autonomous running on a 40mph section of road in normal traffic. The third part of the trial used a full-size single decker vehicle, but that unfortunately developed a fault not related to the autonomous system, so we ended up going back to the minibus and running that for an extended period towards the end of 2023.

Mi-Link autonomous bus, Oxfordshire 2023

“We found that the technology worked very well. Unlike other systems we’ve heard about, it was able to cope with junctions, roundabouts and to keep up with general traffic. Initially it did occasionally display a little hesitancy, but that performance improved throughout the trial, which was extremely good to see.

“Just as important, the passengers liked it. Our project partner The University of the West of England did a lot of research to determine their reactions. The presence of the safety driver was key, not necessarily for vehicle-related reasons but for other factors such as personal security.

“Perhaps more surprising, the safety drivers liked it too. We went through a rigorous selection process based on their driving records and customer service skills, but we didn’t have a single dropout – they all wanted to continue. The final big positive was that the business park community were incredibly encouraging and supportive.

“In terms of negatives, probably the top one was our discovery that there was a greater need for infrastructure maintenance than we expected. We knew before we started that the white lines on the roads had to be clear and visible. What we hadn’t accounted for was the need for roadside vegetation to be kept in such close check. Particularly when it got windy, the vehicles sometimes interpreted bushes moving around as a potential hazard.

Safety cases

“In terms of the regulatory framework, we were pioneering all this in the UK, which was quite daunting. That fact it went so smoothly was due to a collaborative process involving the whole Department for Transport, not just CCAV, and also the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), and the Traffic Commissioner, Kevin Rooney.

“We had to produce full safety cases for the vehicles, and operational safety cases for the different routes. At the outset, this was largely a self-approval process, but during the project the requirements changed to include an independent safety case review. That was an additional complication, but actually it provided great reassurance. There was very little we had to change so it was satisfying to know we’d got all the big calls right.

“We weren’t able to charge fares due to a condition of our funding, but we did trial the concept of fare collection by recording use of a £20 a year smartcard pass which is available to all Milton Park business park workers. That’s obviously fantastic value and all those passengers could tap on and off, giving us great information about the journeys being made.

Self-driving bus stop - Mi-Link in Oxfordshire, 2023 — Autonomous bus stop – Mi-Link in Oxfordshire, 2023

“With the AV Act opening the door to more widespread autonomous vehicle use, the most significant hurdle is now financial. For the foreseeable future we will continue to see a safety driver on every vehicle. The legislation currently requires a human behind the wheel to provide assistance to people with disabilities, particularly those in wheelchairs, so our operational costs remain the same.

“However, the cost of the vehicles and depreciation are major issues. They are effectively prototypes with a lot of very expensive extra tech. Until that’s productionised, you’re going to find it very difficult to commercialise operation without some form of grant funding. Level 5 vehicles supported by remote operation could allow you to significantly expand the public transport network – to run bus services in areas where you currently cannot afford to do so. But that’s a long way into the future, I suspect

“More immediate applications include depot operations, where an awful lot of time, money and effort goes into shunting vehicles between cleaning, fuelling and repair. Increasingly, it is recharging rather than fuel, so if we can use autonomy to hook vehicles up to a pantograph or an inductive charging system, there are potentially quite big savings there. Possibly autonomous technology could help us with schedule adherence and punctuality too.

Electric and autonomous

“The clean fuel aspect is important as First Bus will completely decarbonise the services we operate for the public by 2035. Already 14% of our vehicles are zero emission, and, although we’ve dabbled in hydrogen, we were only ever going to pick EVs for Mi-Link. The smaller vehicle was a Mellor Orion E bus manufactured in Rochdale and converted to autonomous operation by Fusion Processing. It not only looked stylish but was extremely reliable. The larger bus was a MetroCity EV, again, fully electric and built from scratch in the UK by Switch.

“I cannot praise highly enough all those in the consortium who helped us bring this ambitious project to fruition, not forgetting project manager John McNicol, all those at Milton Park, and Zipabout who delivered the real-time travel information.”