Self-driving pod 'is true Mini successor', claims its chief engineer

Jez Coates, chief engineer – vehicle projects at Coventry-based RDM Group – made the comparison the iconic marque at the launch of the GATEway (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) project in southeast London today.

GATEway is one of three projects chosen by the government to deliver demonstrations of automated vehicles in urban environments with RDM’s fully electric driverless pod spearheading the LUTZ (Low-carbon Urban Transport Zone) Pathfinder project in Milton Keynes, a project that will see pod vehicles operating along a predetermined footpath route.

The four-wheel steer LUTZ Pathfinder pod seats two people, can travel at a maximum speed of 15mph and has a range of 40 miles. To maintain a safe course of travel it uses sensor and navigation technology provided by Oxford University’s Mobile Robotics Group.

Coates said: ‘Its equipped…with an array of different types of sensors to build up a 3D picture of the environment it’s operating in.  It holds that in its memory and every time it does a journey it augments the quality of the 3D model it has of the area it runs in.’