IMMSATT - Insight and Management of Multimodal Unsegregated Active Travel and Transport

During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, more people were walking and cycling as a means of transportation. For this trend to continue post-pandemic, significant measures will be necessary to improve the safety of vulnerable road users in unsegregated rural and urban multi-modal transport environments. The recently announced government incentive, "Active Travel", is focussing on restarting the local economy by attracting people back into their town and city centres while supporting the recovery of local bus companies, and promoting active and sustainable means of transport for residents, including cycling and walking.

R4DAR with support from Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) and the Satellite Applications Catapult will look at the feasibility, development and exploitation of recent advancements in imaging radar technology, combined with R4DARs novel identification capability to develop a geospatial data system that can integrate with current and future traffic management systems to sense, observe, identify and accurately position vehicles, bicycles, e-scooters and pedestrians on rural roads and in complex, high-density environments such as town and city centres. The enhanced geospatial data provided by this innovation will support the wide-scale adoption of active travel measures, providing a safer, greener environment for all users to enjoy.

In Phase 1, we will study the feasibility of using a low-cost radar beacon which can be read by radar to provide localised high-resolution geospatial data enabling enhanced navigation and surveillance in unsegregated multi-modal transport environments. We will also investigate and consider how localised positioning, navigation, and surveillance data can be made ubiquitously available for integration into wider urban and rural traffic management systems.

In Phase 2, R4DAR will draw on existing commercial partnerships which include expertise from aerospace, automotive, infrastructure, data systems, local government, and technology to develop and demonstrate a comprehensive geospatial data solution that will take advantage of the enhanced localised tracking and guidance benefits of the radar and beacon technology and combine it with other traffic management sensors, data management systems and communication technologies. The data outputs will be tailored to feed into a wide range of management systems enabling active modes of transport such as bicycles, e-scooters and pedestrians to be reliably detected, identified, monitored and tracked providing an extra level of safety not available today. A successful outcome of phase 2 will result in a transition to larger-scale deployments and customer trials in a range of environments.