The UK CITE project has come to a close as all infrastructure installation and cybersecurity testing has been completed, following the large-scale autonomous vehicle trials on roads in the Midlands in the UK.
The £7.1m (US$9m) project, which includes contributions from the UK government’s Intelligent Mobility Fund and Highways England, concluded with a demonstration at the Coventry Transport Museum and on-road demonstrations using a fleet of Jaguar Land Rover connected vehicles.
In creating a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) test environment, UK CITE instigated the installation of ITS G5 (wireless) roadside units in Coventry and on the M40, M42, A45 and the A46 road network. These units enable messages displayed on smart motorway overhead gantry signs to be replicated in vehicles using in-vehicle information (IVI) messages.
Claire Lewis, senior business development manager at lead consortium partner Visteon Engineering Services, responsible for overall technical architecture of the project, said, “UK CITE has successfully demonstrated a multi-technology environment, combining previously disparate communications systems, which will have a significant impact on improving road safety and traffic conditions – including congestion.
“As these communications technologies are rapidly becoming mainstream in today’s vehicles, the UK CITE test environment will prove a great asset for the development of connected and future autonomous mobility.”
In addition to on-road trialling of the V2X communications, simulation and modeling enabled the consortium to study the impact of connected technologies in different road, traffic and weather conditions, comparing them to the behavior of non-connected vehicles.
Colin Lee, Jaguar Land Rover V2X manager, said, “Implementing V2V and V2X connectivity offers huge opportunities to improve congestion, safety and efficiency of travel. By working with our partners on UK CITE we have been able to quantify the extent and impact of these benefits for road users. The collaborative nature has accelerated how quickly we can deliver connected technology so we can start improving journeys for our customers in the very near future.”
Plans are in place to roll the UK CITE environment into the Midlands Future Mobility program at an investment of over £27m (US$34.3m) to create a world-leading connected infrastructure and ecosystem.
Highways England project manager Ian Thompson said, “Highways England is proud to have worked with the consortium of partners on the UK CITE project. We installed roadside infrastructure to allow the provision of real-time information to vehicles and ensured the participants met safety requirements necessary, to trial new technologies on our road network.”