OCTOBER 2023 AFTERMARKET 27 www.aftermarketonline.net Entries open for the Selfdriving Industry Awards 2023 Celebrating excellence in automated mobility, in the UK and internationally, entries are open now for the inaugural Self-driving Industry Awards. Presented by Cars of the Future, the Self-driving Industry Awards 2023 cover all aspects of this exciting and fast-growing ecosystem, including the aftermarket. From impressive engineering and design developments, to essential work in areas such as insurance and public trust, performance is assessed on commercial success, societal benefit and technical advancement. A Self-driving Industry Awards spokesperson said: “Peer recognition plays an important part, with all entrants nominating a self-driving Person of the Year and Vehicle of the Year. In the Aftermarket category, we invite applications from manufacturers, suppliers and service providers involved in self-driving vehicle maintenance and repair – everything from technician training to remote diagnostics, tooling and equipment. “If you’ve made a transformative technological leap, or provided incredible thought leadership, then you should be entering these awards.” The deadline for entries was 5pm UK-time on Friday 29 September 2023, with all shortlisted candidates receiving an invitation to the Awards ceremony in November. WMG at the University of Warwick, home of The National Automotive Innovation Centre, has reached for the sky (and sea) with ground-breaking research into safe automated land, air and marine mobility. Last year, Professor Siddartha Khastgir, Head of Verification and Validation at WMG, reached out to experts in other automated transport sectors, to see if there were opportunities to learn from each other. 38 organisations got involved, including self-driving big-hitters Wayve, Oxa (formerly Oxbotica), Aurrigo, and Imperium Drive, along with a host of UK universities and regulatory bodies. Having started his career with Tata Motors in India, Professor Khastgir worked with OEMs in Germany for FEV, before doing a PhD in trust in automation and test methodologies for automated driving systems at WMG. “After my PhD, I established a team on verification and validation, looking at how to prove that self-driving cars are safe,” he said. “We spent four or five years working on a methodology which would be scalable. At that time, we were still very car focused. The methodology we created is underpinned by the Operational Design Domain (ODD) concept and its definition. “We had a lot of discussions with the DfT, the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA), the European Commission, and also industry. I was very humbled by the response, to the extent that our framework is actually in the EU automated driving legislation. “We felt that, because of the framework’s scalability, it could be translated into aviation and maritime. We took what we did in self-driving, abstracted it, and identified things that we thought would be similar and different. We then held an event in London, where we presented it to stakeholders from all the sectors. “Getting people from all these different domains into the same room is no mean feat, a big success for WMG. We identified three areas that the safety assurance ecosystem really needs help with. The first was a safety framework and metrics, the second was virtual test environments (simulations), and the third was communicating safety. “We urged all stakeholders – developers, manufacturers, fleet service providers, regulators and policymakers – to work together to demonstrate and communicate safety, rather than competing using safety as a selling point. “We created three working parties and over the last year they’ve held 10 workshops, equating to over 200 person days of work. That led to the Cross-Domain Safety Assurance for Automated Transport Systems report, which we authored. It was very well received, not only in the UK, but internationally.” Indeed, the report launch was attended by, among others, the chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee, Greg Clark MP, the chair of the Transport Select Committee, Iain Stewart MP, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh MP. What do self-driving and automated air and sea transport Follow us on Facebook/aftermarket magazine
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