FiveAI driverless car trials begin today on roads in London
Bromley and Croydon the test track for autonomous vehicles ahead of passenger trial planned for 2020
Driverless car trials using technology developed by UK company FiveAI have started today in London.
The supervised trials in Bromley and Croydon, will feature highly visible FiveAI-branded Ford Mondeos trundling around a range of streets of the two South-East London boroughs. It comes ahead of plans to roll-out an autonomous car-sharing service at some point in the future - with the company hoping to launch passenger trials in 2020.
The trials this week, involving five cars, will be running over both day and night, and follow on from a data gathering exercise conducted by the company in August 2018. That exercise involved driving round the streets to gather information on the road layout and road-user behaviour.
FiveAI is a partner in the StreetWise self-driving project, a government-funded initiative intended to develop a self-driving system that could work in London. StreetWise is supported by Transport for London, the Transport Research Laboratory, Oxford University, insurance giant Direct Line and a number of other organisations.
Europe needs its own start-up in this area. For one, our driving culture is completely different and our cities don't look like cities in the US or Asia
FiveAI CEO and co-founder Stan Boland claims that the UK and Europe needs to develop its own self-driving technology in order to accommodate different road layouts and driving cultures.
"Europe needs its own start-up in this area. For one, our driving culture is completely different and our cities don't look like cities in the US or Asia. It's high time that we build on the region's strength in artificial intelligence," Boland told TransportXtra in 2017.
Minister for transport, Jesse Norman, welcomed the ‘safe testing' of FiveAI's technology on London roads. "The long term potential for self-driving vehicles is huge - to improve road safety, tackle loneliness and isolation, and create economic opportunity," he said.
"So I welcome the safe testing of this new technology. But increasingly self-driving cars are just one of many innovations we are likely to see on our roads."
FiveAI was co-founded by former Acorn executive, and Element14 and Icera co-founder Stan Boland. FiveAI has offices in Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh, as well as in London. The company also has a test track in Millbrook, Bedfordshire and has also taken its autonomous vehicles for a spin in the real world nearby.
The company raised £26.8 million in funding in 2017 to further its ambitions, which included £12.8 million from the StreetWise project. Investors in FiveAI include Lakestar Capital, Herman Hauser's Amadeus Capital, Notion Capital and Kindred. In July 2016, it raised $2.7 million in seed funding.
FiveAI is planning to develop a platform for self-driving vehicle technology that can be licensed and used by manufacturers, rather than developing and selling a completed vehicle itself.
The AI and Machine Learning Awards are coming! In July this year, Computing will be recognising the best work in AI and machine learning across the UK. Do you have research or a project that you think deserves wider recognition? Enter the awards today - entry is free.