C2I 2022 Automotive Winner - On the road with zero occupancy autonomy

The initial heady promise of autonomous vehicles (AVs) was always going to face a bumpy road to fruition. At times it has felt that each forward step has been followed by two back, with passenger safety and real-word complexity proving inevitable brakes on the sector’s progress. Addressing those issues has been central for our winner in the Automotive category, marking a major leap forward for safe, autonomous driving.

‘Europe’s first zero-occupancy autonomous vehicle journey on-road’ may not be the snappiest project title in this year’s C2I, but you can’t fault it for descriptive accuracy. Oxbotica – a longstanding UK pioneer in AV software – teamed up with Australia’s Applied EV to deliver a first of its kind - a fully autonomous outing on publicly accessible UK roads. The collaboration took off after Oxbotica ‘scoured the Earth’ for the right vehicle platform to pair with its latest software advances. 

With teams on opposite sides of the world...the time difference had the advantage of giving us a near-24hr cycle of productivity