Electric commercial vehicle producer Arrival has completed the first live demonstration of its Automated Driving System (ADS) at a fully functional parcel depot.
This is the first time an Arrival van has maneuverer around a facility without a human driver inside the EV. The vehicle was able to autonomously complete all operations that are performed daily by a commercial fleet driver.
According to Arrival, these technologies, part of its Robopilot project, improve both safety and efficiency in depots. It aims to improve market knowledge, functionality, and public perception of autonomous driving systems.
The company hopes the technology then can be adapted for the planned rollout in all Arrival vehicles including its bus and car.
“At Arrival, we are building supplementary technologies that will help drivers. Depot manoeuvres are the most accident-prone parts of a worker’s shift and with our technology, we hope to introduce greater safety by removing human driving errors happening in confined environments,” said Max Kumskoy, head of advanced driver assistance and automated driving systems at Arrival.
“We are starting with a fixed controlled environment in the depot, where we are truly able to test and validate our technology. We can then understand how it will operate on public roads, in our vehicles, and how it can be implemented worldwide.”
Robopilot is part-funded by Innovate UK and the Centre for Connected Autonomous Vehicles. Through the project, Arrival has been able to develop and test its own ADS, which uses in-house algorithms, combined with hardware helping to fast-track the development of self-driving technology and showcase its capabilities.
The company is developing a scalable commercial ADS, that relies on computer vision and avoids expensive sensing technologies. Following the successful completion of testing and validation of Arrival’s ADS in a fixed controlled environment, it hopes to begin testing its autonomous driving functionalities on roads in the UK.
