The GATEway project announces the next phase of driverless pod trials
The GATEway project is soon to launch its open public trial of driverless pods. These autonomous pods will provide first and last mile transportation around the Greenwich peninsula by connecting important transport hubs with business, leisure and residential locations.
The GATEway team is delighted to announce that for the next phase, commencing in the Autumn, Fusion Processing will provide sensing and control equipment on the brand new pods that are being built by Westfield Sportscars. The pods are based on the original Heathrow Airport platform pod design and have been updated for use in first and last mile transportation operational environments.
Simon Tong from TRL is the Technical Lead on the project and explains the new development, “GATEway has always been focused on exploring public perception and understanding of driverless vehicles. With Fusion joining the team, GATEway is in a unique position to let the public interact with three very different autonomous control systems during our urban trials. Each of our autonomy providers – Fusion Processing, Oxbotica and Gobotix – are great British success stories and together with Westfield they represent the diversity of driverless expertise in the UK.”
In April this year, the GATEway project provided over a hundred members of the public an opportunity to ride in the first prototype driverless pod in Greenwich powered by Oxbotica’s Selenium autonomous control system.
In the next phase of the project, using Fusion Processing’s autonomy system, the GATEway project intends to transport hundreds more people with a fleet of new Westfield pods based at the UK Smart Mobility Living Lab in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.
Dr Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica said “It was an amazing opportunity for us to step into the GATEway project and deploy our Selenium autonomy system into the prototype pod and demonstrate it so successfully in research trials conducted by the Royal College of Art and TRL. We wish Westfield and Fusion well as they take their product closer to a production phase”
Read more : https://gateway-project.org.uk/the-gateway-project-announces-the-next-phase-of-driverless-pod-trials/