Enabling Affordable Autonomy Using Hybrid Dense Vision

Autonomous vehicles have vast economic potential for UK plc. Like any new technologies, the adoption curve

can be dramatically accelerated by improving the balance between cost and benefit. However this delicate

balance is often overlooked in many studies and sensor costs currently limit any reasonable business case.

This proposal is about inducing a step change in the affordabililty of autonomous vehicles that will accelerate

this nascent technology to deployment. The Feasibility Study will combine new, ground-breaking Intellectual

Property in 3D dense vision into a road-going prototype and assess the performance of this radical low-cost

alternative to laser localisation over many thousands of miles of testing. The outcome will be an analysis of the

performance of a new Hybrid Dense Vision approach - leading to a reference design for an ultra-low cost sensor

system for autonomous vehicles that could reduce existing sensors costs for autonomous systems by over an

order of magnitude.