rFpro has announced that it is a consortium partner on two major government-funded projects focusing on the development of autonomous vehicle simulation technology. The initiatives are being financed through the Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility: Supply Chain (CCAMSC) competition, run by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Innovate UK, which is awarding £18.5m (US$23.1m) to 13 projects and involves 43 British self-driving technology and services providers.
CCAV has awarded a £2m (US$2.5m) grant to the Sim4CAMSens program, which will be led by Claytex. Alongside rFpro, the other consortium members are Syselek, Oxford RF, WMG, National Physical Laboratory, Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult and AESIN.
Sim4CAMSens will involve the development of a sensor evaluation framework that encompasses modeling, simulation and physical testing. The project will see the creation of new sensor models, improved noise models, new material models and new test methods for AD and sensor producers.
The second project, DeepSafe, has been awarded £2m (US$2.5m). Led by dRisk.ai, the DeepSafe consortium including DG Cities, Imperial College London, Claytex and rFpro and is aimed at unlocking a barrier to the commercialization and deployment of self-driving vehicles.
Together, the specialists will develop the simulation-based training needed to train autonomous vehicles to handle edge cases. DeepSafe seeks to commercialize ‘sensor real’ edge case data – a simulation of what an actual sensor would detect – together with AV training tools, for release in the UK and internationally after the project.
The CCAMSC competition was launched in October 2022 and is part of the UK government’s roadmap for self-driving vehicle deployment: Connected and Automated Mobility 2025: Realising the Benefits of Self-Driving Vehicles.