DG Cities surveys UK views on driverless cars – roughly a third in favour, a third against and a third undecided.

Happy to go driverless? D-Risk reveals even 36/29/35 UK opinion split

DG Cities, a London-based company specialising in people-centred smart city technologies, has conducted interesting research into the UK public’s views on driverless cars.

The headline result was: Of 1,034 people surveyed in 2021, 36.4% would be happy to ride in an autonomous vehicle (AV) tomorrow, with 28.5% undecided and 35.1% less keen.

There were significant differences across the age groups, with over half (56.1%) of 18-34 year-olds confident that self-driving cars will be safer than human-driven vehicles, compared to less than a third (30.3%) of those aged 55 and over.

The work was part of the Innovate UK funded D-Risk project, focused on improving the safety of self-driving cars. DG Cities’ D-Risk partners include AI specialist dRisk.ai, software developer Claytex and Imperial College London.

We spoke to Edward Houghton, Head of Research and Service Design at DG Cities, to find out more.

Public engagement on driverless

EH: “We’re an urban innovation company looking at new technologies within cities to understand how they can be implemented with the public and communities in mind. We work on projects based around new tech, like autonomous vehicles, and we speak to the public about their experiences, supporting tech developers to implement their products in the most safe and appropriate way.

Autonomous vehicles get a lot of press interest and, because the technology is still very much in development, the public rightly have questions. It’s a really interesting topic. I’m a behavioural scientist and environmental engineer, so my interest is in the public perception side – how people see and understand these vehicles, their experiences of using them.

“We look at how people could use this type of service in the future, and the kind of ethical design requirements the technologies will need to work effectively. DG Cities specialises in engaging the public in the debate around autonomous vehicles, working with our partners to understand how we can make the technology accessible.”

Driverless perception age differences

EH: “The idea was to try and understand how ready the UK public is to adopt this type of technology. We provided a definition of what we mean by self-driving – a vehicle that can operate by itself between points A and B with minimal human interaction.

“We found some interesting differences according to age. Older people seemed to be more concerned about safety and didn’t necessarily trust the vehicle to make the right decision. Younger people were far more likely to say they would trust the vehicle.

“There are a number of reasons why this might be the case. For example, older people may have seen technologies in the past that they now don’t trust, or there may be a low level of tech literacy.”

Near miss data

EH: “DG Cities has been a partner in other autonomous vehicle projects – we ran engagement on the driverless trial in Greenwich a few years – but D-Risk was the first where we looked specifically at safety and trust, and also tried to collect edge cases.

“The really unique part of D-Risk is the knowledge graph – our “map” of real-life edge cases from traffic cameras and police accident reports. We’re also using Facebook to ask the public about complex scenarios they’ve experienced – extraordinary things an autonomous vehicle might need to deal with.

“Whether you’re a driver or not, we’ve all heard scary stories of when things go wrong. But accident reports only capture incidents, so data on near misses is missing. The public can tell us about when they got very close to being in a severe accident. That’s very powerful in terms of adding to the library. Our partners then turn it into simulation and coding to train the vehicles.”

D-Risk report on driverless cars 2021
D-Risk Community Insights Report on driverless cars 2021

For more info and to read the full report visit drisk-project.org

Tim Dawkins explains why the UK is so well placed to develop self-driving vehicle technologies and regulations.

World Economic Forum: UK provides leadership on autonomous mobility

With its laudable aim “to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance”, transformational technologies like autonomous vehicles are natural territory for The World Economic Forum. Here, we get the considered views of the Forum’s Automotive & Autonomous Mobility Lead, Tim Dawkins – an Englishman working for the Geneva-based organisation in sunny California.

Tim Dawkins
Tim Dawkins leads a portfolio of automotive and autonomous mobility policy research activities.

Tell us about your path to autonomous vehicles and The World Economic Forum

TD: “I started out studying motorsport engineering at Brunel and my first job out of university was in vehicle security for automotive consulting firm, SBD, helping manufacturers meet Type Approval requirements with anti-theft technologies. When SBD opened an office in North America, I went there, to lead their consulting in autonomous driving. Then, in 2018, I got my MBA and wound-up joining The World Economic Forum.

“Here at the Forum, our mission is greater than to convene events for business leaders, but actually to improve the state of the world. In my domain, that means making sure that the future of transportation is as safe as possible. Broadly, we work with governments and industry leaders to help them understand each other better. In the world of autonomous vehicles that means helping governments understand how the technology is evolving and the creation of new governance structures – which can be used in regulations, standards and assessment criteria.

“A crude analogy is to think about a driving test for the self-driving cars of the future – what does that look like? It’s obviously a lot more nuanced and complex than that, but by being a neutral entity – bringing together the likes of Aurora and Cruise with leading academics and regulators to have focused discussions around autonomous vehicle operation and deployment, or what it means to define a safe autonomous vehicle – is a very effective way of achieving better outcomes for all.

“It’s not just about the advanced technologies of the future, our portfolio also includes road safety research – improving the infrastructure, reducing crashes and fatalities with today’s ADAS technologies, and looking ahead to creating a safer future of mobility with autonomous vehicles.”

With your global perspective on autonomous mobility, how is the UK doing in terms of the government’s stated aim of being “at the forefront of this change”?

TD: “The automotive industry has always been very important to the UK economy, so it is natural that that industry and the government agree on the strategic priority to make the UK an attractive place to develop and test these technologies. We have world-leading engineering talent, universities and research and test facilities within our borders, so it’s shifting the focus from sheet metal and engines over to Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technologies. Really, it’s a great fit.

“What UK governments have done – I say governments plural, because this has been going on for over 10 years – is to create institutions which spur development. There’s been dedicated funding and research grants not only to grow the CAV ecosystem within the UK, but to encourage international organisations to come and develop in the UK as well.

“What we see now is the result of many years of building the business case, to position the UK as a competitive place to test and develop new technologies. This top-down industrial policy, combined with an open code of practice to facilitate automated vehicle trialling, make the UK a great place to test and develop AVs.

“This ecosystem view is something we study here at the Forum. We recently published a joint paper with The Autonomous – The AV Governance Ecosystem: A Guide for Decision-Makers – which looks at how the standards bodies, alliances and consortia are coming together to develop solutions which will become policy, or at least be used in future governance. You will notice that a lot of UK entities feature very prominently in this study.

“For example, BSI are one of the long-established standards institutions that have been mission-aligned to further CAV mobility, by delivering technical standards and guidance to address governance gaps in the sector, such as the new Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 1881, 1882 and 1883 documents and a vocabulary of CAV terms. Then you have entities such as Zenzic to create the business environment and inform the overall roadmap to making autonomous vehicles a reality, supported by entities such as Innovate UK, and a whole ecosystem of universities and research entities creating a thriving network for innovation.

Please could you comment on the transformative potential of AVs to be, as the WEF’s Mouchka Heller put it, “a necessary first step towards building a better, more equitable and healthier world”?

TD: “One of the things our team like to tackle is how to incentivise these companies to go not just where they can make the most profit, but to provide services to those who most need transportation. This means providing services in areas that are underserved by public transport.

“Think about commuting into London – you drive to the train station, then get onto the TFL network. If you can make that journey more efficient, hopefully more affordable, and accessible, suddenly the economic opportunities that come with commuting into London are open to a greater swathe of people. It’s a very local issue. You have to look at each city and say: where are the areas with the least economic opportunities and how can mobility provide them with greater access to jobs, healthcare and all the things they need?

“Fundamentally, mobility should be considered a human right. It’s not codified as one, but the link between good access to mobility and access to a good future is extremely strong. When we talk to city regulators, for example, they’re very keen to view autonomous vehicles as a way of making their transportation ecosystem more efficient – using AVs to get people onto the existing network, rather than replacing buses or train services.”

That’s certainly opened our eyes to the important work of the World Economic Forum, and we’ll be hearing more from Tim’s colleague, Michelle Avary, Head of Automotive and Autonomous Mobility, at next month’s Reuters event, Car Of The Future 2021.

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) 4G and 5G connectivity via small cells can be a lifesaver.

Carsofthefuture.co.uk editor to host Automotive & Transportation session at Small Cells World Summit 2021

Carsofthefuture.co.uk has signed a media partnership agreement with The Small Cell Forum (SCF) for its three-day online Small Cells World Summit, The Future of Mobile Networks, on 11-13 May 2021.

Small Cells World Summit 2021 registration
Small Cells World Summit 2021 registration

As part of the deal, Carsofthefuture.co.uk editor Neil Kennett will moderate the Automotive & Transportation session from 11am on Wednesday 12 May, with high-profile speakers including: Peter Stoker, Chief Engineer for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles at Millbrook Proving Ground; Dr Maxime Flament, Chief Technology Officer at the 5G Automotive Association, one of the world’s leading authorities on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS); Bill McKinley, Connected Car Business Lead at Keysight Technologies; and Mark Cracknell, Head of Connected and Automated Mobility at Zenzic, responsible for accelerating the self-driving revolution in the UK.

Neil Kennett, said: “We are delighted to partner with The Small Cell Forum for this exciting virtual event, which brings together mobile operators, vendors and regulators from around the globe. The Automotive & Transportation session will focus on connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) opportunities, particularly vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, in-vehicle payments, and the rival ITS-G5 and C-V2X 5G technologies.

“Small cells deliver high-quality, secure 4G and 5G coverage, so there are clearly a multitude of new use cases in the connected car world and the wider mobility ecosystem. Aside from supporting self-driving, they can facilitate everything from in-car infotainment and shopping, to fixing technical problems before they occur and pre-empting likely crash scenarios. It is no exaggeration to say they could be a lifesaver.”

Carsofthefuture.co.uk readers can benefit from a 40% discount on Small Cells World Summit 2021 tickets using the code SCWS2021. See www.smallcells.world/

CGA’s simulations train autonomous vehicles to deal with environments specific to the UK.

Self-driving and smart cities: stop wishcasting and get real with predictive simulation

Our Zenzic CAM Creator series continues with Liverpool-based Jon Wetherall, Managing Director of CGA Simulation, and Max Zadow, Director of Future Coders.

By applying gaming knowledge to real-world mobility questions, CGA has created engaging simulations to study autonomous driving and smart city solutions.

JW: “My background is gaming. I used to work for the company that did Wipeout and F1 games. We made a racing game called Space Ribbon and one day, about five years ago, we got a call from The Department for Transport (DfT). They were doing a research project on virtual reality (VR) in the testing and training of drivers, specifically hazard awareness.

“We turned it into a game and it worked – people said their attitudes changed as a result of our simulations. The hardest scenario came early in the game – a parked lorry with a big blind spot – and a lot of people crashed. VR feels so visceral, the experience can be quite vivid and shocking. Of course, smarter cars will hopefully fix these types of situations.”

CGA Simulation junction and forecourt
CGA Simulation junction and forecourt

To pursue this goal, CGA received a grant from Innovate UK to create an artificial learning environment for autonomous driving (ALEAD).

JW: “The aim was to make these cars safer and we stayed true to our computer game history. We didn’t have the resources to lidar scan the whole area, so we did our own thing using mapping data. We made a digital twin of Conwy in north Wales and unlike other simulations we kept all the ‘noise’ in – things like rain. This was important because it is now well-understood that noise is a big challenge for autonomous vehicles (AVs).

“Modern autonomous driving stacks have 20 different subsystems and we generally focus on only one or two, to do with perception. There’s been massive progress in this area over recent years, to the extent that artificial intelligence (AI) can identify an individual by their gait. What’s more, you can now do this on a computer you can put in a car – this is one of the cornerstones of driverless.

“It’s not the first time people have been excited about AI. In the 50s they were saying it was only a few years away. It has taken much longer than people thought, but major problems have now been solved.

“We are lucky to have one of the world’s leading experts in radar on our doorstep, Professor Jason Ralph of The University of Liverpool, and he helped us develop the simulation. You have to feed the car’s brain, a computer, all the information it will need – from sensors, cameras, GNSS – and you can do all that in the software.”

MZ: “In particular, The University of Liverpool were interested in how weather affects things, right down to different types of rain and mist. In California, if an AV encounters conditions it can’t handle, like heavy rain, it pulls to the side of the road. That’s ok for San Francisco but not for Manchester!

“A few years ago, everyone seemed to be using the example of an AV encountering a kangaroo. How would it cope? The point is you can use our simulations to train cars, to create algorithm antibodies for once in a lifetime events and regular things in different environments. That remains an essential part of what’s needed to make AVs a reality.

“We picked Conwy partly because it has very different patterns of land use to America. An early use case for AVs is predicted to be taxis, but in the UK these are most frequently used by people who don’t own their own car, and they often live in high density housing or narrow streets. The operational design domains (ODDs) are going to have to deal with environments specific to this country – steep hills, roads which twist and turn, and changeable weather.”

Mobility Mapper

Wetherall and Zadow’s latest collaboration is Mobility Mapper, a project to create greener and more intelligently designed transport hubs. The technology underpinning Mobility Mapper has been used previously by the team to model Covid 19 spread, autonomous vehicle technology and by the Liverpool 5G Create project (funded by DCMS as part of their 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme).

JW: “E-hubs are basically an extension of what used to be called transport hubs – train or bus stations. They’ll provide charging facilities and access to different modes of transport, for example, you can drop off an e-scooter and hop into a shared autonomous car.

“Here in Liverpool, there was a big trial of e-scooters, big in international terms not just UK. The worry was that a lot of them would end up in the canal, but that didn’t happen. The trial was incredibly successful. It’s all about linking that movement and nudging people away from car ownership.”

MZ: “We were already thinking about how Jon’s technology could be used for mobility as a service (MAAS) when we attended a virtual future transport conference in LA with the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV).

“That was an influence, as was an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) trade show in Copenhagen, where we saw an autonomous tram system designed to take bicycles. It was a small step from there to imagining autonomous trams carrying autonomous delivery pods.

“This is classic smart city stuff but you need to know how these e-hubs are likely to be used, with no track record, nothing to go on. We need simulated environments to make best guesses in. That’s Mobility Mapper.”

JW: “It is early days, still in the development phase, but the authorities in both Manchester and Liverpool have agreed there’s a need for such a predictive simulation tool.”

As we wrap-up a thoroughly enjoyable interview, Max dons his Director of Digital Creativity in Disability hat: “Autonomous delivery bots are basically electric wheelchairs without a person, so there’s clearly a potential benefit, but there needs to less wishcasting and more real work on how accessibility will be affected.”

For further info, visit CGAsimulation.com

Dr Joanna White says Highways England is currently more focused on the connected bit of connected and automated mobility (CAM).

Highways England expert predicts Level4 self-driving in towns before motorways

Our Zenzic CAM Creator series continues with Dr Joanna White, Head of Intelligent Transport Systems at Highways England.

As the body responsible for designing, building and maintaining our motorways and major A-roads, Highways England (HE) is a uniquely important player in the UK connected and automated mobility (CAM) ecosystem. Here, Head of Intelligent Transport Systems at Highways England, chartered engineer Dr Joanna White, outlines its work on CAM.

Dr Joanna White, Head of Intelligent Transport Systems at Highways England
Dr Joanna White, Head of Intelligent Transport Systems at Highways England

JW: “A key aim in improving our service is to look at how we can safely use emerging technology to better connect the country – people and places, families and friends, businesses and customers. This includes what digital channels we might use, delivering a cleaner road environment and achieving net zero carbon.

“Our connected corridor project on the A2/M2 in Kent finished 10 months ago and we are just completing the evaluation. Collaboration is vital and this was a joint project with Kent County Council (KCC), Transport for London (TfL), the Department for Transport (DfT) and others. It was also part of a wider European project, Intercor.

“We are currently more focused on the connected bit of CAM, building on the services we already provide. This includes beaming information directly into vehicles (replicating what you see on the gantries) and also what data we can anonymously collect from vehicles’ positioning sensors. Can we maintain service from one part of the network to another? Can we do it in an accurate, timely and secure way? How do people feel about it?

“We try not to choose particular technologies – whether it’s radar, lidar, cellular – we are interested in all of it. It could be 5G and, via the DfT, we work closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which leads on that. One of the most positive government actions was the requirement for mobile operators to provide 90% coverage of the motorway network by 2026.

Highways England car interior 2
Highways England in-car upcoming junction message

“We were very proud to be involved with the HumanDrive project in which a self-driving Nissan Leaf navigated 230 miles from Cranfield to Sunderland. It was a great learning experience in how to  conduct these trials safely, underpinned by our safety risk governance. We had to identify all the risks of running such a vehicle on the strategic road network (SRN), and find ways to mitigate them. It was fascinating to see how it coped on different types of roads, kept to the lines and responded to road sign information.

“Then there’s our Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: Infrastructure Appraisal Readiness (CAVIAR) project, which has been slightly delayed due to Covid. We are building a simulation model of a section of the M1, a digital twin, and we have a real-world car equipped with all the tech which will start operating in 2021. That will collect a lot of data. This is one of our Innovation competition winning projects, run by InnovateUK.

“Within Highways England we have a designated fund for this kind of research, and that means we can invest in further trials and do the work needed to provide more vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications.

“Personally, I think that Level4 self-driving, eyes off and mind off, is years away, perhaps decades, certainly in terms of motorway environments. However, we are constantly in discussion with government on these issues, for example, we contributed to the recent consultation on Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS).

“Working closely with industry and academia, we have already started off-road freight platooning and are looking to move to on-road trials. We’ve had lots of discussions about freight-only lanes and the left lane is often suggested, but you have to consider the design of the road network. There are lots of junctions close to each other, so how would that work, especially at motorway speeds? At first, I see self-driving more for deliveries at slower speeds in urban areas but, as always, we will listen to consumer demand.”

For further info see highwaysengland.co.uk.

Bold predictions about our driverless future by petrolhead Clem Robertson.

Meet the maverick radar expert of UK drones and driverless

Welcome to a new series of interviews with our fellow Zenzic CAM Creators. First up, Clem Robertson, CEO of R4dar Technologies.

As a keen cyclist who built his own Cosworth-powered Quantum sportscar from scratch, it’s no surprise that the founder of Cambridge-based R4dar takes a unique approach to self-driving. Indeed, his involvement can be traced directly to one shocking experience: driving down a local country lane one night, he had a near miss with a cyclist with no lights. He vividly remembers how a car came the other way, illuminating the fortunate rider in silhouette and enabling an emergency stop. It proved to be a light bulb moment.

R4dar urban scene tags
R4dar urban scene tags

What does R4dar bring to connected and automated mobility (CAM)? 

CR: “I’d been working in radar for five or six years, developing cutting edge radar for runways, when the incident with the cyclist got me thinking: Why could my cruise control radar not tell me something was there and, importantly, what it was? This kind of technology has been around for years – in World War II we needed to tell the difference between a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt. They placed a signal on the planes which gave this basic information, but things can be much more sophisticated these days. Modern fighter pilots use five different methods of identification before engaging a potential bogey, because one or more methods might not work and you can’t leave it to chance whether to blow someone out of the sky. The autonomous vehicle world is doing similar with lidar, radar, digital mapping etc. Each has its shortcomings – GPS is no good in tunnels; the cost of 5G can be prohibitive and coverage is patchy; cameras aren’t much good over 100 metres or in the rain, lidar is susceptible to spoofing or misinterpretation; digital maps struggle with temporary road layouts – but together they create a more resilient system.”

How will your solutions improve the performance of self-driving cars?

CR: “Radar only communicates with itself, so it is cyber-resilient, and our digital tags can be used on smart infrastructure as well as vehicles – everything from platooning lorries to digital high vis jackets, traffic lights to digital bike reflectors. They can tell you three things: I am this, I am here and my status is this. For example, I’m a traffic light up ahead and I’m going to turn red in 20 seconds. Radar works in all weathers. It is reliable up to 250-300m and very good at measuring range and velocity, while the latest generation of radars are getting much better at differentiating between two things side-by-side. We are working with CAM partners looking to use radar in active travel, to improve safety and traffic management, as well as with fleet and bus operators. We are also working with the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry to create constellations of beacons that are centimetre-accurate, so that delivery drones can land in a designated spot in the garden and not on the dog!”

R4dar cyclists in fog
R4dar cyclists in fog

What major developments do you expect over the next 10-15 years?

CR: “Fully autonomous vehicles that don’t carry passengers will come first. There are already little robots on the streets of Milton Keynes and, especially with Covid, you will see a big focus on autonomous last mile delivery – both UAVs and unmanned ground vehicle (UGVs). You never know, we might see delivery bots enacting a modern version of the computer game Paperboy. More and more people in urban areas with only roadside parking will realise that electric cars are tricky to charge, unless you put the chargers in the road, which is expensive. If you only need a car one or two days a month, or even for just a couple of hours, there will be mobility as a service (MAAS) solutions for that. Why would you bother with car ownership? E-scooters are one to keep an eye on – once they’re regulated they will be a useful and independent means of getting around without exercising. Town centres will change extensively once MAAS and CAM take off. There will be improved safety for vulnerable road users, more pedestrianisation, and you might see segmented use at certain times of day.”

Do you see any downsides in the shift to self-driving?

CR: “Yes! I love driving, manual gearboxes, the smell of petrol, the theatre, but you can see already that motorsport, even F1, is becoming a dinosaur in its present form. People are resistant to change and autonomous systems prompt visions of Terminator, but it is happening and there will be consequences. Mechanics are going to have less work and will have to retrain because electric motors have less moving parts. Courier and haulage driving jobs will go. Warehouses will be increasingly automated. MAAS will mean less people owning their own cars and automotive manufacturers will have to adapt to selling less vehicles – it’s a massive cliff and it’s coming at them much faster than they thought – that’s why they’re all scrambling to become autonomous EV manufacturers, it’s a matter of survival.”

R4dar lights in fog
R4dar lights in fog

So, to sum up….

CR: “Fully autonomous, go-anywhere vehicles are presented as the utopia, but there’s a realisation that this is a difficult goal, or at least a first world problem. There might always be a market for manned vehicles in more remote locations. A lot of the companies in this industry specialise in data, edge processing and enhanced geospatial awareness, and that will bring all kinds of benefits. How often have you driven in fog unable to see 10m in front of you? Self-driving technology will address that and many other dangers.”

Hearing bold predictions like these from a petrolhead like Clem, suddenly Zenzic’s ambitious 10-year plan seems eminently achievable.

For further info, visit the R4dar website.