Heathrow’s Ultra Pod technology joins GATEway driverless car pilot

British companies 8309 Westfield Sportscars, 8308 Heathrow Enterprises and 8307 Oxbotica have joined the GATEway (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) project in Greenwich and are currently developing driverless shuttles for operation in Greenwich in summer 2016.

Using entirely British engineering and software capabilities, the new consortium members will be developing the existing UltraPods currently in service at Heathrow Airport into fully autonomous and electric passenger shuttles. Operating at Terminal 5 for nearly five years, these pods have already carried 1.5m passengers and completed 3m kilometres of fully automated operation. Led by Westfield Sportcars, these pods will now be adapted to navigate the streets of Greenwich without the need for dedicated tracks.

The addition of the new consortium members brings a wealth of expertise to the GATEway project. Westfield will act as the vehicle integrator and manufacturer of the pods, responsible for the design and testing of the vehicles and ensuring that, where possible, they are manufactured in accordance with the current type approval requirements. Heathrow Enterprises will be responsible for vehicle software engineering, while Oxbotica will be deploying its vertically integrated autonomy solution, which includes mapping, localisation, perception and trajectory planning, to enable the safe operation of fully driverless shuttles in Greenwich.  It will also implement an innovative cloud-based shuttle management system, enabling the shuttles to operate as part of a synchronised, self-governing ecosystem, complete with smartphone booking applications, monitoring and reporting.

The US$11 million GATEway project is jointly funded by Innovate UK and industry. Led by  the Transport Research Laboratory (491 TRL), which has over 50 years’ of experience in vehicle automation, the project will investigate public perception, reaction and engagement with a range of different types of automated vehicles.  

The shuttle trial, which is one of three automated vehicle tests within the GATEway project, will investigate public acceptance of automated shuttle vehicles within the urban mobility landscape. Other trials set to take place in the project include autonomous valet parking and automated deliveries.