SPACES - Safe Pathway to Autonomous Control Externally Supervised

Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are a route to safe, accessible, readily available and zero emission transport for society. Vehicles can be operational 24/7 to support affordable mobility as and when people need it, whilst minimising the crash risks brought into driving by human operators. Systems have been developed and trialled, however, when operating on public roads, currently a safety supervisor must be present in the vehicle in case anything goes wrong. Additionally, safety concerns related to potentially unreliable communications or cyber security failures need to be allayed to facilitate a widescale roll out. To fully realise the opportunities that CAVs can bring, we need to develop and test appropriate, safe, and cyber resilient systems and protocols that allow fully autonomous operation on UK public roads. The SPACES project aims to demonstrate that the jump to fully commercial services without onboard safety supervision is not a dream but is achievable now.

The SPACES project will be led by RDM Group who, via their autonomous vehicle arm Aurrigo, have developed and tested the autonomous AUTO-SHUTTLE for road operations and the AUTO-POD(r). RDM will work with key organisations including Warwick Manufacturing Group, Vodafone, Thales, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, Syselek and the National Exhibition Centre. The assembled group will allow SPACES to develop the technological innovation in CAV engineering and communications with the cyber resilience required to operate without safety supervision, whilst developing real life informed test cases that can be trialled at the Midlands Future Mobility CAM testbed. Our project will culminate in a live demonstration at the NEC, where our autonomous vehicle can be showcased at a specially built test bed site located within the NEC grounds. The demonstration events will show key stakeholders including transport operators, local and national government, vehicle manufacturers and the general public that CAVs can be operated safely and securely. We will seek to widely disseminate and communicate our research outputs to outline CAV safety and support societal understanding of this technology and its potential uses and positive impact.

SPACES will develop, verify and validate CAV technology, communications systems and cyber security requirements, strengthen the safety case for CAVs, provide increased understanding of the infrastructure needed for safe operation and inform UK policy, in order to achieve the ultimate goal of removing the need for an on-board safety supervisor whilst operating in a live environment.