Background
Project Alloyed set out to play a role in the build up of one of the four key areas identified in the UK's Industrial Strategy , the Future of Mobility. A future that can only be achieved through the evolution of the UK Transport Sector while positioning the UK as mobility Leder.
Rapid developments in technology and innovation present huge opportunities together with challenges that must be overcome. These challenges include the availability and adoption of smarter cleaner vehicles, upgrades and optimisation of our Transport Infrastructure and linking the two of these to the Internet Economy where emerging business models will reduce the barriers to entry for innovative services.
The project takes a use-case driven approach to identify and prioritise areas of research and development. The key technical objectives of the project are to study and where possible develop prototype systems which:
- Allow vehicles and infrastructure to connect seamlessly independent of technology or location
- Tightly Integrates to existing and future in-vehicles technologies
- Enable a services layer allowing the creation of both open and secure services
Executed over 15 months from August, 2017 this project is an initial foray towards delivering a broader vision. A number of work packages were identified to deliver project objectives with each work package assigned a leader supported by one or more Partners. The project culminates with a number of demonstrations of the systems and concepts developed over the course of the project.
Project Alloyed Scope of Work
Vision
A future where people, goods and services are brought together optimally through connected & autonomous vehicles, intelligent transport networks and distributed cloud services. A future that is efficient, safer, cleaner, productive and shared.
Efficient through the digital integration of all forms of public and private transport vehicles, may they be bicycles, passenger vehicles, drones, boats or trains. Safer through the standardisation of advanced safety features in vehicles and infrastructure. Cleaner through the reduction in individual emissions and better emissions management of older vehicles and the creation of managed emissions corridors. Productive through both time made available but also through the integration of the transport supply chain. Shared, where vehicle ownership declines making way for a greater sharing economy.
A future on its way, allowing existing and emerging players to provide niche contributions to an end to end transport platform.
Our Team
This project is a collaborative effort between the Public Sector, Private Sector and Academic bodies within the UK. The Consortium, led by Epitomical, consists of six Core Partners and ten Advisory Partners, where the core Partners have received public funding for this project.
The Consortium was formed of a broad set of players within the Transport ecosystem allowing the project to benefit from varied interests and the priorities of each contributor. The project has benefited greatly from the individual contributors who come from a diverse set of cultures & backgrounds, areas of technical, regulatory & commercial expertise as well as the market segments that the individual organisations represent.
Organisations Involved
engineers
Collaborators
Team Photo - Q3 Review Meeting
Connected & Autonomous Systems
Vehicles of the future will be able to monitor, in real time, their own working parts, safety conditions, interact with other vehicles and the infrastructure around them as well as provide new services, as they become part of a larger mobility ecosystem.
For this to become a reality, a number of areas need to be considered including data extraction, bus consolidation, seamless connectivity and system modularity.
Intelligent Infrastructure
For mass-market adoption, existing transport infrastructure will need to evolve through a combination of public and privately owned networks. A network that senses, analyses, controls and communicates with vehicles as well as other infrastructure peers.
Such a network needs to be able to provide seamless connectivity to vehicles for critical communications. It may also tightly integrate with existing and emerging traffic control systems, accommodate a variety of peripheral devices such as sensors and process data locally or remotely.
Distributed Services
In a connected world both vehicles and infrastructure will need to allow for the development of new services. This includes everything from diagnostics and maintenance services, mobility management, safety and driver assistance to in-vehicle content and entertainment.
In some cases, services such as content delivery and location based services can be disjointed from critical vehicle and the infrastructure services whilst services such as payments and user-management need to be tightly integrated.
