A two-week driverless pod trial has commenced at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to help support the wider rollout of driverless shuttles in the future.
The Aecom-led Capri consortium is running the trial, which is simulating an on-demand service to determine the use of CAV transport services at public transport hubs and around private estates, including tourist and shopping centres, hospitals, business parks and airports.
The trial at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is the first public appearance for the Capri pods, which pick up and drop off passengers at a number of points on a circular route, passing Lee Valley VeloPark, Copper Box Arena, Here East and Timber Lodge Café.
Visitors to the park can book a ride on one of two British-made pods using an app through information marshals located at different stops along the pods’ route.
When booking their journey, participants can choose which stop they want to be picked up and dropped off at, with the system giving destination instructions to the self-driving vehicles.
According to Capri, an important element of this trial is the assessment of peoples’ behaviours and attitudes towards driverless pods. As such, representatives from Capri consortium, members the University of the West of England and Loughborough University are observing how people behave when confronted by the pods, as well as surveying passengers who take a ride on them.
Focusing on trips of up to five miles to connect people to places, a key aim of the project is to develop a business model blueprint to help site owners of large and diverse estates such as Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park assess whether driverless shuttles will be viable at their site and how best to invest in the technology.
David Barwell, chief executive – UK and Ireland, Aecom, said: “Given the environmental, efficiency and mobility benefits of connected and autonomous vehicles, there are a wide range of potential markets for these types of on-demand services, but significant research is still required to support their future commercial use.
Capri is bringing together technical, social and operational research to help the future deployment of driverless shuttles and keep the UK at the forefront of CAV development.
“Our trial at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is a really important milestone for the project, enabling us to test the service with the public at a large and busy site for the first time.”
Following the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park trial, the Capri pods will be at The Mall in South Gloucestershire in early 2020, returning to the Olympic Park next year with a final trial that will extend their route and further test the on-demand technology.
