Trio of Bristol firms receive government funding to develop autonomous vehicle technology

Published by

Peter Davison

Three ambitious autonomous vehicle projects involving Bristol businesses have received funding from the UK Government

Three ambitious autonomous vehicle projects involving Bristol businesses have received funding from the UK Government.

Three projects involving Calyo, Aptcore and Zero Point Motion – as well as the University of West England - have all been successful in securing funding from the UK Government’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) Commercialising Connected and Automated Mobility: Supply Chain competition.

These projects will be delivered in partnership with CCAV’s delivery partners, Zenzic and Innovate UK to bring together government and industry to support the development of sovereign capabilities within the UK CAM supply chain.

The selected projects will address critical technology gaps, enhance safety and security, improve performance and reliability, and create scalable opportunities both domestically and globally.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt said: “By supporting growth in the industries of the future, including through better regulation, we are delivering on our plan to get the economy growing and make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business.”

The projects include:

High-Performance Imaging Radar (£1.8 million):
This project aims to develop a high-performance imaging radar product specifically designed for AVs. By addressing a gap in the CAM Supply Chain UK, it will enable more robust, cost-effective systems that can operate in a wider range of weather conditions while reducing reliance on lidar.

The project is being led by Aptcore, which is based in The Passenger Shed in Bristol and provides optimised processor cores for silicon integrated circuits.

Photonic Inertial Sensors for Automotive (£1.4 million):
This project aims to develop advanced position and navigation sensors that work reliably in various environments.

By leveraging Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS), Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), and low-cost laser/detectors, the project will improve the performance, resilience, and safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs) by reducing reliance on vulnerable external signals.

The project is being led by Zero Point Motion, which is based at the Bristol University Quantum Technologies Innovation Centre, in partnership with the University of the West of England. Zero Point Motion is developing inertial sensors to enable high-precision positioning and navigation.

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Driven by Sound (£910,000):
Driven by Sound is a collaborative initiative to create an affordable, robust navigation system for automated vehicles, with a particular emphasis on adverse weather handling. This system features a high-performance computer supporting all levels of automated and autonomous driving. It incorporates cutting-edge 3-D ultrasound sensors for safety and redundancy, ruggedisation for durability, and robust cybersecurity measures.

The project is being led by Caylo, which is based at Future Space at UWE and is developing the next-generation deep-ultrasound sensor systems, encompassing software, hardware and machine learning algorithms, that will enable advanced robots, autonomous platforms and beyond, to perceive the environment in 3-D in real time.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.