GATEway project announces the next phase of driverless pod trials

The GATEway project will soon launch its open public trial of a driverless pod that will provide first- and last-mile transportation around the Greenwich peninsula by connecting important transport hubs with business, leisure and residential locations.

The next phase will commence in the Autumn and Fusion Processing will provide sensing and control equipment on the brand new pods that are being built by Westfield Sportscars.

“GATEway has always been focused on exploring public perception and understanding of driverless vehicles,” said Simon Tong from TRL who is the Technical Lead on the project. “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 2017, the GATEway project provided members of the public an opportunity to ride in the first prototype driverless pod in Greenwich powered by Oxbotica’s Selenium autonomous control system.

“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,” added Dr Graeme Smith: CEO of Oxbotica. “We wish Westfield and Fusion well as they take their product closer to a production phase”

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.

This trial is one of a number of automated vehicle tests within the GATEway project investigating public acceptance of automated vehicles within the urban mobility landscape. Other trials in the project include last-mile automated deliveries (tested in June 2017) and autonomous valet parking (due to be tested later in 2017).