UK’s Loughborough University attempts to smooth Europe’s path to C/AVs

Loughborough University in the UK is leading a three-year initiative which aims to assess the impact of introducing connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) in Europe. The £5.7m project, called Levitate, is funded by the European Union and will help European cities to plan for the effect C/AVs will have on infrastructure and society. Levitate began this month and will consider how AVs might improve safety, congestion and the environment, while looking at key policy decisions which would maximise thei
December 10, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

Loughborough University in the UK is leading a three-year initiative which aims to assess the impact of introducing connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) in Europe.

The £5.7m project, called Levitate, is funded by the European Union and will help European cities to plan for the effect C/AVs will have on infrastructure and society.

Levitate began this month and will consider how AVs might improve safety, congestion and the environment, while looking at key policy decisions which would maximise their benefits.

The project’s principal investigator, Professor Pete Thomas of Loughborough Design School, says: “These vehicles bring new challenges and have the potential to disrupt mobility in both good and bad ways. Our job in Levitate is to provide a new scientific basis that will enable cities and regions to make policy decisions that are the best for each circumstance.”

Researchers will work with nine academic and research institutions from across Europe, Australia, China and the US, as well as Transport for Greater Manchester and the city of Vienna. Other cities which are involved include London, Barcelona, Paris, Stuttgart, Berlin, Amsterdam and Gothenburg.

Some estimates suggest that 25% of vehicles could be completely autonomous by 2030 – with the rest classed as highly autonomous.

Given that human error is a factory in 90% of crashes, C/AVs have the potential to improve safety – but there are a number of issues which need to be solved, including consumer fears over inadequate control systems and worries about how control is switched between human driver and vehicle.

Thomas said: “Additionally, it is expected that, while vehicle automation may bring an improvement in mobility for people with disabilities, it could have the effect of increasing traffic and road use by up to 14% with a related additional environmental impact.”

Levitate will create a web-based toolkit to help city planners forecast the impact of autonomous mobility and design infrastructure to suit. It will also examine the mobility technologies that will give the greatest economic return.

Location Based Systems

Related Content

  • Bigger role for data protection and privacy policies in transportation
    June 11, 2015
    Dr Caitlin Cottrill, lecturer at the University of Aberdeen’s School of Geosciences, examines the impact of privacy legislation on the transportation sector. Growing reliance on big data, underscored by the increasing ubiquity of smart infrastructure and the ‘Internet of Things’, has profoundly impacted the regulatory environment experienced by transportation professionals. This is particularly the case in relation to the privacy of personally identifying information (PII). There has been increased attenti
    Read More
  • Just Zip it! Lindsay takes to the road
    October 10, 2018
    Greater vehicle connectivity is going to have huge implications for traffic management. David Arminas climbed aboard a Lindsay Road Zipper to see what this might mean in future As vice president of barrier specialist QMB Canada, Marc-Andre Seguin is sanguine about the future for moveable barriers. On the one hand, it looks good. The oft-stated advantage of moveable barriers is that the systems are cheaper to install than adding a lane or two to a highway or bridge. Directional changes to lanes can boost
    Read More
  • Lack of communication jeopardises road weather information
    February 3, 2012
    A lack of communications means that the case for more widespread use of road weather information systems is still not happening, says Vaisala's Jon Tarleton. More effective exchanges up and down the political scale are needed, he adds
    Read More
  • IBTTA Summit: satellite tolling is the future
    August 15, 2019
    IBTTA members met in Florida to consider the technological changes that will impact their businesses – including satellite tolling. Colin Sowman reports from Orlando Over decades, the technology employed in toll collection has been honed to near perfection – automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are easily within a couple of per cent of infallibility even at highway speeds. However, technical innovations beyond the confines of the toll road cannot b
    Read More

Highlighted Content