INnovative Testing of Autonomous Control Techniques (INTACT)

Urban mobility vehicles, or driverless Pods, will reduce congestion and accidents on our roads and give more

people travel independence. However, they require trust from users – they must be safe, secure and robust.

This requires extensive testing and validation of the Autonomous Control System, or ACS, which is the brains of

the Pod responsible for detecting objects and controlling the vehicle. Reducing the cost and optimising this ACS

is essential in facilitating the large scale manufacture and sale of commercially viable Pods in the near term.

However testing on public roads and in real-world driving situations would be very expensive, unrepeatable

and potentially dangerous. Hence this project proposes the use of a novel simulator concept, to enable the

evaluation of an optimised ACS in a safe, repeatable and scientifically rigorous environment. RDM, the UK’s

only designer and manufacturer of driverless Pods, and University of Warwick will work together to enable the

broader uptake of Pods, help inform the legislative framework for the UK and eventual certification of

autonomous vehicles, and show the UK as a leader of research into autonomous vehicles.