Project Endeavour
The road to autonomous vehicles
Project Endeavour is an exciting project looking at accelerating and scaling the deployment of autonomous vehicle (AV) services in our urban areas, and builds on the successful MERGE Greenwich project.
The project is Innovate UK funded and is being delivered by consortium partners DG Cities, Oxbotica, Immense, TRL, BSI and Oxfordshire County Council.
Endeavour will deliver multi-location AV pilots on public roads at locations in Oxford, London (Greenwich) and a third UK city. The first pilot in Oxford is now live with and more pilots at the other locations will take place in Summer 2021.
“We are leading the work on city-led service design and understanding public perceptions, to ensure these elements anchor the development of AV services.”
The role of DG Cities
We are leading the work on city-led service design and understanding public perceptions, to ensure these elements anchor the development of AV services, ensuring they benefit cities and their residents.
As part of the project, we conducted a survey of the UK public in 2019 to investigate perceptions and attitudes to AVs and AV ridesharing services, as well as the extent to which the public uses different forms of public transport. This research acts as a pre-COVID 19 baseline allowing a unique comparison with viewpoints in 2021 which are currently being collected. Data from these studies are being used to help shape Project Endeavour’s public trial programme, and is intended to inform innovation and the development of AV services, as well as the development of evidence-based transport policies and interventions.
Our city-led service design approach sees us engaging with local authorities as a key stakeholder and developing tools to support them. As part of this we are developing a Mobility Service Assessment Framework (MSAF), enabling comparison of a new mobility service (such as AV rideshare) with other mobility offerings, against a set of social, economic and environmental metrics.
Additionally, we are developing a Deployment Guidance Pack to help Councils and Highway Authorities know what to expect when AV developers are trialling their vehicles on public highways. Conversely it is also intended to be useful for the AV developer too, to help better prepare them for interfacing with the Authority.
Why is this work important?
Our Mobility Service Assessment Framework is designed to support cities and transport authorities to understand how potential new services will impact their areas. The MSAF enables a comparison of our AV ridesharing service with other mobility services, against a set of social, economic and environmental metrics and gives cities and transport authorities a data-based methodology for differentiating between various transport offers.
The Trialling Guide aims to put into an easily understandable, and concise, document what Councils can expect from AV developers in relation to their legal and best practice options.
“Our city-led service design approach sees us engaging with local authorities as a key stakeholder and developing tools to support them.”