British engineering, research and test service provider Horiba MIRA is teaming up with Vodafone to bring 5G to its Midlands headquarters, in a claimed boost for the UK’s autonomous vehicle industry.
Home to an advanced set of facilities for engineering self-driving vehicles, this latest investment by Horiba MIRA will see Vodafone deploy and build a 4G and 5G mobile private network at the company’s Nuneaton site.
This will expand Horiba MIRA’s self-driving capabilities, which currently includes expertise in cybersecurity threats and the use of artificial intelligence in unmanned ground vehicles in the defence sector.
The 5G offering will be used by Horiba MIRA’s clients, namely automakers, self-driving technology developers and their suppliers, to drive the development of autonomous vehicle technologies through new forms of engineering, testing, verification and validation.
Vodafone is installing the 5G technology, which offers ultrafast data speeds, allowing vehicles to communicate with each other and the surrounding infrastructure – including traffic signals – in near-real time.
Chris Reeves, head of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies at Horiba MIRA, said: “As the self-driving industry transitions from developing standalone autonomous vehicles, to delivering self-driving vehicles that can communicate with each other and the surrounding infrastructure, having access to Vodafone’s 5G technology is a huge boost for the sector as a whole.
“It will enable us to work and collaborate with the industry’s biggest players to ensure their technologies are safe, robust, convenient and efficient to hit our roads in the near future.”
