In the first live public road demonstration of its kind, an Innovate UK and CCAV-funded project demonstrated technologies to transfer the control of vehicles operating on the public highways in Oxford and London across three states from manual driving to an autonomous self-driving state and finally tele-operated control by a remote driver operating from a control centre.

The self-driving vehicles and remote teleoperations were managed by StreetDrone, a leading developer of technologies that deliver efficiencies in supply chain logistics in order to illustrate how automation can be progressively introduced into industrial contexts. This ‘autonomy + teleoperations’ approach enables more complex tasks to be managed by remote teleoperations drivers while autonomous systems can manage vehicle operations in more straightforward contexts.

Project ENCODE is part of StreetDrone’s portfolio of trials of technologies focused on delivering efficiencies to the supply chain that includes the automated and teleoperated management of HGV deliveries at Nissan Sunderland (5G CAL).

Central to ENCODE is the safe transfer of control across the multiple driving states by virtue of the cybersecurity of the operating systems. This element of the project was managed by ANGOKA, an IoT security company and StreetDrone partner focused on protecting machine-to-machine connectivity for transport and smart city applications.

“The success of this trial conducted not in a controlled environment but out on the public highway, is blending autonomous technologies with teleoperation to prove an advanced level of technology readiness that can now deliver much-needed efficiencies into the supply chain,” said Mike Potts, StreetDrone’s CEO. “Where tasks are too complex for autonomous technologies, teleoperations steps in. This integration provides a ‘ready-now’ solution and it has been a sight to behold to see it in operation.”