GATEWAY Project

GATEway - Greenwich Automated Transport Environment

October 2015 – March 2017

Funded by industry and Innovate UK

The GATEway project, an £8 million project funded by Innovate UK and Industry, is a technology driven project that aims to demonstrate the safe and efficient integration of sophisticated automated transport systems into complex real world smart city environments. The project is led by TRL and is based in the Royal Borough of Greenwich in London.

Tell us what you think about Autonomous Vehicles [APRIL 2016]
As part of the GATEway project we are seeking volunteers to take part in a survey designed to collect information from the general public concerning their perception of autonomous vehicles, which are ‘driverless cars’ controlled automatically by onboard computer. Your participation in this study will contribute to improving our understanding of how people may interact with autonomous vehicles. Click this link to go straight to the survey.

Project Objectives

Recent years have seen the rapid development of autonomous vehicle technology given the huge potential benefits in safety, efficiency and effectiveness of surface transport. The change brought by the technology in vehicle types, journey patterns, parking requirements and driver behaviour etc. will have far reaching economic, social and environmental impacts. The change also raises a number of issues facing vehicle manufacturers, regulators and those wishing to exploit the technology. The main issues include a lack of both clarity over the legality and regulations governing automated transport and of knowledge as to how such vehicles will impact upon the transport system, other road users, society, business enterprise and the environment.

The GATEway project will address these issues to deliver demonstrator automated transport technologies so that implementation, legislation, driver/passenger experiences, transport systems, commercial activities, social/health/crime implications and skills/knowledge growth can all be explored. The project provides an opportunity to examine critical risks, legalities and insurance matters and the impact of automated transport on smart cities, with specific relevance to how Greenwich and London may improve transport and attract high value businesses and services, but also export of these capabilities to both established and emerging smart cities. The GATEway project seeks to establish Greenwich as a leading venue for the testing and development of automated transport systems, showcasing their effectiveness for implementation in London, the UK and beyond and enhancing the global competitiveness of UK businesses.

The project focus is understanding engagement and interaction with automated vehicles, their local, national and international implications, effectively disseminating the results and providing routes to exploitation. The project legacy will be a permanent driverless vehicle test environment in Greenwich, generating tangible business outcomes for consortium partners and attracting international OEMs and associated industries to the UK.

The GATEway project consists of six workpackges:

WP1 – Programme management
WP2 – Resilience, risk management, liability, insurance
WP3 – Public, media and industry stakeholder engagement
WP4 – Synthetic environments and teleoperation
WP5 – Live automated vehicle trials
WP6 – Evaluation, exploitation, dissemination

The GATEway partners are: Transport Research Laboratory, The Royal College of Art (RCA), University of Greenwich (UoG), Royal Borough of Greenwich, Telefónica UK Ltd, RSA Group PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Commonplace Ltd, Oxbotica, Westfield Sportscars, Heathrow Enterprises and Gobotix Ltd.

Within the GATEway project, the UoG is represented by FSEG.

A significant part of the GATEway project is the running of three sets of zero emission autonomous vehicle trials:

Trial Series 1: Pod trials. This series of trials will involve testing the autonomous pods in a controlled public environment within Greenwich.
Trial Series 2: Car trials. This series of trials will involve testing autonomous vehicles carrying out a valet parking task.
Trial Series 3: Van trials. This series of trials will involve testing autonomous vehicles moving goods.



The GATEway driverless pods to be tested in Greenwich.

Pointcloud representation of the University of Greenwich Old Royal Naval College (ORNC) campus with the Gateway Autonomous vehicle, produced by Westfields (a GATEway partner) driving itself around the campus. The University campus is one of the possible test sites for one of our trials. Here Oxbotica (another of our project partners) is determining whether there are any spatial constraints for the test vehicle.

FSEG’s Role in GATEway

The nature of the physical interaction of pedestrians with autonomous vehicles in a shared space environment is currently unknown. There are many unanswered questions involved in this interaction, including but not limited to:

Whether pedestrian knowledge that the vehicle is autonomous impacts their risk perception and behaviour, positively or negatively?
How pedestrians will react when attempting to cross a road in front of an approaching autonomous vehicle?
Will crossing behaviour be any different from the interaction with normal vehicle? And if so, how is the behaviour affected by the difference in every aspect between the normal vehicle and the autonomous vehicle?

Understanding the nature of the interaction is essential for planning to identify operating restrictions and to identify and help mitigate the risk associated with operating autonomous vehicles in a shared environment. It is also essential if we are to develop agent based models that are capable of predicting the interaction between agents and autonomous vehicles. Such models would be beneficial to planning and risk management.

The main interest for FSEG is to examine pedestrian interaction with the autonomous vehicles. FSEG is primarily involved in WP5 and will be involved in:

selecting an appropriate site to run the trials,
assisting in the design of the autonomous vehicle trials involving pedestrians,
assisting in the running of the trials involving pedestrians,
designing questionnaires for pedestrians interacting with autonomous vehicles, passengers riding in autonomous vehicles and the general public,
assisting in the collection of data through video cameras and post-trial questionnaires.
analysis of video and questionnaire data.

FSEG will use the collected video and pedestrian data to determine:

How pedestrians interact with autonomous vehicles when crossing the road?
What are the potential factors that influence pedestrians’ decision to cross the road?
Pedestrian, passenger and general public risk perception associated with autonomous vehicles and how this may change through experience of usage.

Project Partners

1. Project lead
2. Venue
3. Large multi-nationals
4. Research
5. SMEs

Further Information

Prof. Ed Galea
Fire Safety Engineering Group
University of Greenwich
Greenwich Maritime Campus
Old Royal Naval College
Queen Mary Building
Greenwich SE10 9LS
UK

Tel: +44 (020) 8331 8730
e-mail: E.R.Galea@gre.ac.uk

Consortium web page

http://www.GATEway-project.org.uk

@GATEway_TRL