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Researchers at the University of Warwick’s WMG, in partnership with Aurrigo and Milton Keynes council, claimed a ‘world-first’ after the vehicles came together for easier and more efficient navigation.
The WMG researchers developed an intelligent swarming software based on techniques used by birds and insects, which was then integrated into the pods.
Pods scheduled themselves to form ‘platoons’, following each other when possible, to minimise the number of individual vehicle movements and the need for a supervisor per pod. In the future, one supervisor could potentially watch several pods and report any unexpected behaviour.
The technology also enabled the pods, working within fleets, to automatically optimise their behaviour to meet future passenger demand by distributing themselves to areas where are most likely to be requested.
Ultimately, an application could hail individual pods or a platoon for people travelling in groups. The vehicles are designed for pedestrian areas and shared spaces. The project team hopes public transport could be used on highways, with the pods providing first- or last-mile transport.
“The collaborative swarm algorithms have been developed to enable our autonomous vehicles to optimise their own trip schedules, so they deliver the optimum efficiency from a fleet of vehicles,” said Simon Brewerton, chief technology officer at Aurrigo.
“The swarming technology is very exciting and has the potential to operate large fleets of remotely supervised autonomous vehicles in a safe and scalable way. Interest in this will be huge.”
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