Nissan Leaf: London self driving car trial ‘successful’ despite people ‘not following rules’

Two Nissan Leaf vehicles clocked up 1,600 miles as part of the three-year trial.
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A three-year test of self-driving vehicles around Woolwich was successful despite Londoners’ propensity not to follow the rules of the road, according to the company behind it.

Robert Bateman, manager of Nissan’s technical centre in Europe, said: “If you can get it right here you can then deliver an autonomous vehicle anywhere in the world."

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He added: “In Japan, everybody follows the rules. Not so in the UK”.

London presented specific challenges for the trial of electric self-driving vehicles because there are “more pedestrian interactions and crossings”, but the three-year test was completed with no crashes.

ServCity

ServCity is jointly funded by government and industry - the government’s £100m Intelligent Mobility fund administered by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV).

It is delivered by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, with partners Nissan, Connected Places Catapult, TRL, Hitachi Europe, the University of Nottingham and SBD Automotive.

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Based on an electric Nissan Leaf, the ServCity CAV has completed trials in the real-world environment of TRL’s urban testbed, the Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL), based in Greenwich.

A Nissan Leaf fitted with cameras for self-driving purposes A Nissan Leaf fitted with cameras for self-driving purposes
A Nissan Leaf fitted with cameras for self-driving purposes

The test

Two Nissan Leaf cars were fitted with GPS, a series of cameras and radar, as well as an engineer in the driving seat in case intervention was needed.

Some 270 cameras were placed along the 2.7-mile (4.3km) route in Woolwich, which enabled the self-driving vehicles to “see around corners” and anticipate potential traffic problems ahead before they reached them.

1,600 miles were logged by the two vehicles during the ServCity project.

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The government has invested £7m in the £10.7m project, with transport minister Jesse Norman saying: “ServCity has proven key to answer the practical questions of how to integrate self-driving vehicles into cities for the public good.”

The driver in the vehicle had to intervene twice during media demonstrations, according to the BBC - once to avoid a possible collision with a bus and once to avoid a chunk of road surface which had become dislodged from a pothole.

Nissan

David Moss, senior vice president, region research and development for Nissan AMIEO (Africa, Middle East, India, Europe, and Oceania) said: “We are extremely proud to be a part of the ServCity project and our 100% electric Nissan Leaf has proven to be the ideal test vehicle. Through our Nissan Ambition 2030 long-term vision, we are committed to supporting greater access to safe and exciting mobility. Advancing our autonomous drive capability and expertise is critical to this effort and research projects such as ServCity are vital to the evolution of technology.

“Through our world-class R&D base in Cranfield in the UK, Nissan is continuously innovating to bring cutting-edge, purpose-driven technologies that benefit our customers. ServCity’s achievements contribute to our efforts to usher in a future where we hope to see zero fatalities on the road while providing customers with the added comfort and convenience that come from advanced autonomous drive technologies.”

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Robert Bateman, manager at Nissan Technical Centre Europe and Nissan project manager for ServCity, said: “Not only has Nissan provided the 100% electric Nissan Leaf as a test vehicle, our talented group of engineers have also contributed to the research and development of cutting-edge autonomous drive technology for use within the project. This has enabled the development of a test vehicle that is able to autonomously navigate the busy streets of London alongside other road users – both stationery and moving – while connected with city infrastructure.

“With more than 115 people involved and almost 16,000 working days clocked up across the consortia during the lifetime of the project, ServCity represents an important step towards future deployment of autonomous mobility.”

Connected Places Catapult

Marcel Pooke, sustainability and GIS team lead at Connected Places Catapult, said: “Throughout the project Connected Places Catapult has been demonstrating the art of the possible in scaling CAV technologies, and their supporting infrastructure, to help get these vehicles delivering vital services as soon as possible. Based on the potential demand for a CAV service, combined with potential areas of operation, the Catapult has helped create a blueprint that provides a basis for follow-on work by many other organisations and aims to assist and enable the full-scale deployment of an operational Robotaxi service in a UK city.”

Smart Mobility Living Lab

Thomas Tompkin, head of network infrastructure and operations of SMLL, said: “ServCity is what the Smart Mobility Living Lab was conceived for – to test emerging technologies safely in a realworld urban testbed and accelerate their commercialisation. We configured our roadside sensor infrastructure and data processing to understand and demonstrate the best ways for CAVs to acquire better shared situational awareness from CAV-ready features within the ITS environment.

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“I’m so proud of our engineering team who have supported all the partners in the ServCity project, pushing the boundaries every day to get us one step closer to a transport system that is cleaner, safer and more accessible.”

Hitachi

Nick Blake, chief innovation strategist, Hitachi Europe, said: “The team at Hitachi’s European research and development group has been working on overcoming the complex technical challenges related to safe and reliable autonomous driving in congested urban environments.

“The ServCity project has allowed us to further develop the essential technologies needed for urban driving such as the ability to make safe decisions based on advanced situational awareness, and robust localisation in urban canyons – where GPS signals may not be reliable. We’ve made massive strides in the past three years, and we will continue to participate in the autonomous driving revolution.”

Human factors

Gary Burnett, chair of transport human factors from the Human Factors Research Group at the University of Nottingham, said: “ServCity has supported us to develop novel, human-centred methodologies for designing and evaluating the user experience for future autonomous taxis.

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“Using innovative virtual reality (VR) and field observation methodologies, we have focussed on the inclusive design of interfaces for vehicle occupants and other road users, which deliver a positive user experience in the absence of a human driver. Accessibility has been at the forefront of our research, with contributions from a wide range of potential stakeholders to inform all stages of our work. We have also examined human factors considerations for remote operators who might contribute to the user experience from afar.”

SBD Automotive

Andrew Hart, CEO at SBD Automotive, said: “Robotaxis have the potential to fundamentally transform mobility for both consumers and the cities they operate in. The user experience lies at the heart of that transformation, as operators will need to carefully balance customer expectations with real-world technological constraints imposed by both vehicles and city infrastructure. The ServCity project has seen theory put into practice, so we are now confident of being able to help car makers design a seamless Robotaxi experience.”

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