CS1 Steer-by-Wire Pre-Industrialisation Demonstration Project

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Autonomous vehicles are coming - it is simply a question of when. After the failed promises of the last decade, the core technologies (autonomous driving software, radars, cameras, lidars) that are required to enable safe autonomous mobility have matured significantly. However, for the world to truly realise the benefits of autonomous mobility, vehicles need to be able to operate without restrictions. Whilst restricted speed trials are taking place in cities and urban environments, there are no autonomously driven (AD) vehicles operating across high-speed motorways anywhere in the world. Until AD vehicles are able to operate around population centres on high-speed roads, the business case for the convenient, cheap, always available transport of people and goods and wide societal and environmental benefits that they bring simply will not be achieved.The major barrier to this unrestricted operation is the lack of safety critical steering and braking actuation systems that are designed specifically for use in AD vehicles. Conventional actuation systems are designed upon a fail-safe concept, where in the event of a system failure, the human driver provides the back-up actuation force to brake and steer the vehicle to a safe position. In an AD vehicle, fail-safe systems are simply not suitable because a single point failure will render the system completely inoperable with no other means to control the vehicle. The risks to the vehicle occupants and other roads users associated with this type of failure increase exponentially at speed.Fail-operational systems are a must -- systems that are designed to operate and function normally even in the event of a system failure, ensuring that the vehicle always have the capacity to steer and brake the vehicle.The oligopoly of automotive steering and braking suppliers is unable to enter the AD market at this time. Their legacy structures lead to inflated development costs and extended lead-times, and they simply cannot meet the fast-moving requirements of AD software and platform developers. Chassis Autonomy is a start-up with none of the legacy baggage, our steer-by-wire system is a ground up fail-operational design that in its first-generation guise, already achieved proof of concept.Our second-generation system will complete build and assembly in September 2022 and we will use this fast start grant to maintain development momentum and demonstrate the unique technical capacity of our technology to the market and our customer pipeline on a dedicated functional test rig.