Tag: #Autonomous

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.

“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.

“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.”

Last week, Oxbotica founder and CTO, Professor Paul Newman, addressed MPs on the Transport Committee to explain how self-driving technologies will deliver value to people, businesses and the planet.

The company posted about it on Linkedin, including a short video.

In relation to commercialisation, he said: “I think there’s an ordering of these technologies, and there’s an ordering of the operational design domain. Burdens are rightly different in some domains – it’s different in a mine to Kensington High Street.

“I’ve never come across a city that asks for more single occupancy vehicles, ever. They’ve always said: fewer please. So, I don’t think personal, private transports are the future, because cities want to change the way transport works. They want to make it more accessible. The number of bus trips that Londoners take is absolutely extraordinary. Let’s support that.

“Technological complexity worries me far less than the regulatory complexity. That’s not just saying you should trust us. What’s great about some of the regulation that’s coming through is that there’s meaty technical requirements placed on the manufacturers of autonomy software. That allow the systems to be explainable, and explainability is the foundation of being trustworthy.”

For more on Oxbotica’s vision for universal autonomy, see this recent interview with its VP of Technology, Ben Upcroft.

In late September, at the glamorous Chantilly Arts & Elegance event, near Paris, Volkswagen Group unveiled the Gen.Travel, an all-electric Level 5 concept vehicle. Sorry, did you just spill your tea?

“The all-electric powered Innovation Experience Vehicle (IEV) is a real prototype that drives autonomously (Level 5) and gives a realistic outlook for the mobility of the coming decade,” said the VW blurb. Sounds amazing.

Dr. Nikolai Ardey, Head of Volkswagen Group Innovation, says: “With Gen.Travel, we can already experience today what will be possible in the near future with innovative technology. Door-to-door travel at a new level. Emission-free and stress-free.”

Are VW really claiming to have cracked Level 5? That’s certainly the impression given by some reports.

“Volkswagen is presenting a new way of traveling in luxury and relaxation, with its new vehicle prototype featuring Level 5 autonomy that takes the wheel all the way from departure to arrival,” said Tech Times.

A quick reminder, the SAE international standard describes Level 5 as: “Can drive everywhere in all conditions”. That’s quite an ask.

In our 2020 long-read, Kevin Vincent, Director at the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Automotive Research, mused: “Level 5 in terms of anytime anywhere automation is very difficult; I sometimes wonder if it will be possible, and whether people will even want it.”

Not a problem, apparently VW have sorted it!

Over the last few years, Cars of the Future has reported extensively on the growth of Oxbotica – from Founder and CTO Professor Paul Newman’s ambition to target “anything that moves people or goods”, to exciting partnerships with big hitters including BP, Navtech, NEVS, Ocado, Wenco and ZF, to its headline-grabbing achievement of running a zero-occupancy self-driving electric vehicle on UK public roads.

In this exclusive long-read interview, Oxbotica’s VP of Technology, Ben Upcroft, discusses the company’s vision for universal autonomy and its role in sustainable mobility.  

NK: Thanks for your time, Ben. For starters, tell us about your work at Queensland University of Technology and how you ended up in the UK at Oxbotica?

BU: “I’ve been involved in robotics and autonomous platforms for over two decades, initially on draglines, shovels, and haul trucks for mining. We were looking to take autonomy out into the field, to understand how we could use it in industry. Since then, I’ve been involved in underwater robotic platforms, aerial vehicles, and robotic manipulation.

“Vehicles present such rich problems. Solutions will continuously evolve, just like computers – we’ve gone from mainframes taking up whole rooms to being in everyone’s pocket. Today, we have autonomous vehicles out there operating in all sorts of different domains – on-road, off-road and everything in between – and they’ll continue to improve.

“It has been a real privilege to be part of this product development, from the very early days to a place where we will see autonomy in everyone’s hands, where every person and every organisation will be able to leverage autonomy. That’s what attracted me to Oxbotica.

“We’re creating a Universal Autonomy software platform to enable any vehicle in any place to operate autonomously and gain all the benefits that autonomy brings – efficiency gains, productivity gains and safety gains.

“We’re working in different industries, with lots of different organisations, and have already deployed it into many different domains. To do that, we have made a software platform without baking in assumptions on the hardware, the domain, or the environmental conditions.

“Assumptions are dangerous. For example, to presume that you’ll always be able to see lane markings (not true for off-road domains) and making that a fundamental part of your technology limits your capability for off-highway and off-road domains. Conversely, thinking about things in terms of Universal Autonomy – with a capability to deploy around the globe in various domains – has many advantages.

“Oxbotica is one of very few companies, if any, operating in mining environments, airports, ports, quarries, urban environments for grocery deliveries and passenger transport. It’s such an exciting place to be, to see how we can enable all these industries to take advantage of autonomy.”

NK: Running a zero-occupancy vehicle on public roads was a landmark moment, true self-driving in stark contrast to cars with ADAS…

BU: “Yes, we’re really proud of that particular vehicle – demonstrating how, with our software, any type of vehicle can be autonomous. On one hand you had the technical challenge, but perhaps the greater challenge was understanding how to work with the government, proving bodies, regulatory bodies, policymakers and certification authorities to create the ecosystem.

“It was great to have all those appropriate authorities watching and being involved in the program – understanding how autonomy can go from an add-on to a vehicle driven by a human, to one with no human, no steering wheel or pedals. That unleashes a whole expanse of capabilities for industry to amplify, from deliveries to public transport.

“Zero occupancy enables all kinds of changes. For example, space savings because you don’t need to build a vehicle around the person anymore. Since the invention of the motor car, design has always had to be about the driver, until now. Then there’s power requirements, comfort levels, all those things.

“If it’s a zero-occupancy vehicle for grocery deliveries, the milk doesn’t care if the acceleration is different to what you’d expect from a normal car. If it has to stop and wait for a little while, maybe that’s not such a big issue, because you’re not optimising for the human in the loop anymore. I’m really excited to see how these factors change how industry operates.

“We call this an economy software platform, building on top of what autonomy brings. Much like Android on a Google phone – they don’t build all the apps, they build the capability for others to add apps.

“Microsoft never set out to build a booking system for a dentist business, but they enabled people to come up with the ideas and build on the platform to enable those capabilities. That’s what I really want to see – our platform enabling countless further innovations, progress that no one expected or foresaw.

“The zero-occupancy side of things is very exciting and Oxbotica is one of the first companies in the world, certainly in Europe, to achieve it on public roads.”

NK: It seems that every company developing self-driving tech pays close attention when someone else makes a breakthrough…

BU: “We all rely so much on vehicles to get our goods and move ourselves around, and autonomy brings such a new paradigm to transport, that I can absolutely understand why everyone’s watching everyone else – maybe Oxbotica more than most, because of the partnerships we’re building.

“Our Universal Autonomy capability makes us a horizontal across multiple industries. We build the software into all these different domains, all these different vehicles, and any industry can give us a call if they can see benefits in working with us.

“We’re not trying to be a taxi company or a mining company, and we don’t want to be. Just like we won’t tie people into using a certain type of sensor or fleet management system. We build software that enables companies to innovate, to amplify what they’re doing.

“We work with partners that are experts in their domains, and this gains us experience in terms of the benefits that autonomy can bring in different sectors. For example, Ocado has such an amazing automation system for grocery packing in their warehouses. What we do is connect a warehouse to the kerbside using autonomy, so they’re extending automation all the way to their customers.

“BP is another amazing partner to work with, because it has such a diverse set of domains. Solar farms, wind farms and refineries all require different types of vehicles, and they have locations all around the world which, again, means different requirements. We’re agnostic to the type of vehicle and the type of domain.

“ZF is an automotive tier one supplier developing passenger transport shuttles and we’re its autonomy software platform provider. That’s a super exciting partnership for us because we’ll enable these shuttles to operate autonomously in urban environments all around the world.

“Another one is NEVS, an OEM car manufacturer building small electric passenger vehicles.

Working on autonomy for these vehicles has really changed the way we think about how passengers and people can move around, reducing the need for individual car ownership and reducing congestion.”

NK: That brings us nicely to the relationship with the traditional motor industry. How do you see that evolving over the next 10 years?

BU: “It’s going to be mixed. You’re going to start seeing autonomy in some places, in some industries. As that proves out, it will expand, both geographically for that particular industry, and into other markets, as we as a community gain confidence and better understand the technology and the regulatory frameworks.

“There’s not a huge pull for consumers to have an autonomous car at their doorstep that they can use whenever they want. Don’t get me wrong, that’s potentially a very large market for the future. But there are other markets that have a need for autonomy right now – mining, airports, logistics – they’re looking for safety, productivity and efficiency gains, and the ability to operate 24/7.

“It’s likely that industries struggling to recruit enough drivers will increasingly turn to autonomy to deliver the kind of productivity levels they’re aiming for. And, as we service these markets, that will bring confidence.

“The ability to drive anywhere, anytime, anyplace is a vision that we are working towards, starting in domains that can significantly benefit from autonomy now. So you’ll start seeing autonomous public transport, shuttle buses, soon, within two to three years, maybe earlier.

“Those types of platforms will pop up in different cities, different urban environments. We’ll see other types of autonomous vehicles too, for goods delivery, for example, in an even shorter timeframe. And that’s just going to continue and expand. Autonomy brings so many advantages that industries will soon need to leverage it to be competitive.

“For us to deploy into all these different domains, we need to demonstrate that our technology is safe, both to get insurance and to assure the communities that we’re working with. But traditional verification and validation involves years of continuous testing, driving millions of miles. That doesn’t seem like the smartest way of going about it.

“We think there’s a way to verify and validate in a more accelerated way: to give the system the ability to test itself in simulation and find the edge cases much more rapidly. We’ve developed a product that enables rapid validation and verification called MetaDriver. It’s exciting. It will enable us to deploy new products more quickly, so everyone can gain the advantage of whatever new feature is available in autonomy. That will be key.”

For further info visit the Oxbotica website.

Video of a self-driving delivery robot entering a crime scene in Los Angeles has gone viral, prompting reasonable questions and hyperbolic headlines.

The unusual event, on 13 September, was captured in a 1m46s video by Twitter user “Film The Police LA”, receiving over 3k retweets and £21k likes:

He also posted it to Youtube:

“I wanna see this so badly,” says someone at the start. Near the end someone muses: “That’s gonna be the easiest way to bomb people, with a robot”.

NBC News ran the story under the headline “Skynet Fights Back: Food Delivery Robot Drives Through LA Crime Scene”, a reference to The Terminator films.

The incident itself – a suspected shooting – thankfully turned out to be a false alarm.

Was it self-driving?

However, the appropriation of blame is complicated by human intervention – a bystander lifting up the police tape to enable the robot to proceed, and the later claim that a human operator was responsible.

On 17 September, Serve Robotics, took to Twitter to clarify that: “This week a Serve robot failed to reroute around a police barrier because of human error. While robots are capable of operating autonomously in most circumstances, they’re assigned to human supervisors to ensure their safe operation, for instance when navigating a blockage. We respect the important work of law enforcement and are taking steps to ensure our operating procedures are followed in the future.”

As with the Cruise robotaxi drive-off back in April – “Ain’t nobody in it!” the officer says – in America, autonomous vehicles are having real-world run-ins with the law.

It’s only a matter of time before similar incidents happen here in the UK.

Bournemouth University has highlighted the work of Dr Kyungjoo Cha, Senior Lecturer in Product Design, in helping Hyundai and Kia to ensure that their self-driving vehicles live up to the expectations of Gen Z users – those born between 1997 and 2012.

Specialising in user experience (UX) design, and working in partnership with Hyundai Motor Company’s Holistic UX Group, Dr Cha began the “auZentic” project to understand how young people perceive their digital life and entertainment needs.

“This is a fast-moving sector, with the development of new technologies and artificial intelligence,” she said. “The automobile sector has invested a great deal in research and development for autonomous vehicles, and now Hyundai and Kia have identified the need to understand what will drive the next generation’s experience.

“Generation Z were born with the internet. Their perceptions around entertainment and digital life are different to older generations. Understanding this is crucial for designing the vehicles of the future. It will not necessarily be just about chilling out in the vehicle – we found they are passionate about advocacy and getting behind projects in their digital life.”

Ongoing self-driving partnership

Kia and Hyundai’s positive response to the initial work led to a second stage of the partnership, investigating how users will want to interact and communicate with an autonomous vehicle.

“The people we spoke to gave us many examples of the type of relationship they could have,” said Dr Cha. “Some suggested a relationship like that between a horse and its rider, we also had comparisons to a butler and their employer, or an aeroplane pilot and auto-pilot. Some also spoke about being team players with their cars.

“Different contexts will determine how people want to communicate. For example, if someone was feeling emotional or upset, they might not want to talk.”

The suggested solution is a multi-model approach offering several options for communication between car and user, which could provide safety benefits as well as better user experiences.

2019 Hyundai video

Back in 2019, in the early days of Cars of the Future, this futuristic video of Hyundai’s EV wireless charging and automated valet parking concept was one of our most popular features.