Five shortlisted to develop autonomous future

AECOM, Arup, City Science, Immense Solutions and Leeds City Council have made it through to the final round of Roads for the Future, a national competition to design roads fit for driverless cars.

The competition was launched in January in partnership for Highways England and Innovate UK with the aim of developing ideas for the growth of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) in the UK. “We can see for ourselves the progress in developing cars for the future,” said chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission Sir John Armitt, “we now need to make sure the technology on our roads keeps up.”

AECOM examined how smart signals could advise drivers and vehicles of the speed they should drive at; Arup looked at expanding the flexibility of kerbsides with fixed features; City Science researched into dedicating existing roads to driverless cars; Immense Solutions investigated how the latest artificial intelligence could be used to help improve sat-nav systems; and Leeds City Council looked into improving improve traffic light systems using data from digitally connected cars.

“These five entries clearly stood out and I look forward to seeing how their ideas develop further over the coming months,” said Armitt. The teams are to receive up to £30,000 each to test their ideas and £50,000 will go to the overall winner.