Tire trackers aboard UK driverless car project

London – Tire pressure monitoring is the focus for one of the eight projects, which together have been awarded £20 million in funding to develop the next generation of autonomous vehicles.

The Pathway to Autonomous Commercial Vehicles project will develop an innovative technology to monitor key information from the vehicle and predict safety risks, based on analytics.

The project partners are Tructyre Fleet Management Ltd, University of Portsmouth, Satellite Applications Catapult, RL Automotive.

The research will build on a prototype which monitors tire pressures and temperatures in commercial vehicles, combined with always-on network connection, said an announcement by the UK department for business, innovation & skills.

The projects are the first to be funded from the UK government’s £100 million Intelligent Mobility Fund. They also include developing autonomous shuttles to carry visually-impaired passengers using advanced sensors and control systems, to new simulation trials for autonomous pods to increase uptake and improve real-world trials.

Trials to test driverless cars on UK streets are currently being worked on in Bristol, Coventry and Milton Keynes, and Greenwich.

Autonomous vehicles are also being used in Heathrow to shuttle passengers, although these are currently on designated tracks.

(Image: TyreSafe)