A Coventry-based company has created 10 new jobs over the past year to meet rising demand across the world for the driverless pods it has developed with support from the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Innovate UK.
A division of the RDM Group dedicated to autonomous vehicles, Aurrigo now has annual sales of £4.2m. It has customers in Australia, Canada, Finland, Singapore and the US, and has recently supplied one of its ‘Pod Zeros’ to China. It predicts orders of a further £6m before the end of 2020.
The company was behind a world-first in August – some of the globe’s best golfers taking part in the ISPS Handa Wales Open at Celtic Manor Resort were among the first professional sportspeople ever to be transported in an autonomous shuttle.
Aurrigo has been developing the shuttle for the last two years since it was appointed to be part of the government’s CCAV Smart Cambridge’s T-CABS project to deliver the UK’s first autonomous bus route.
Aurrigo also recently collaborated with researchers from the University of Warwick to demonstrate a major breakthrough in CAV technology, a successful demonstration of pods ‘swarming’ like birds and insects.
This innovation is a key element of a CCAV-funded project called SWARM (Self-organising Wide area Autonomous vehicle Real-time Marshalling). It means that pods can follow each other without supervision, helping each other to drive and navigate through pedestrian areas around people.
You can read more about this project at: http://bit.ly/InnovateUKOct04 and http://bit.ly/InnovateUKOct05
Funding opportunities for businesses
Innovate UK Smart Grants – the next round of funding is open for businesses to apply for a share of up to £25m from Innovate UK to deliver disruptive R&D innovations that can significantly impact the UK economy. The closing date is 25 November 2020. You can read more about this project at: K http://bit.ly/InnovateUKOct06
Transforming Foundation Industries
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of £8m in grant funding for projects supporting recovery and growth of the UK’s foundation industries, helping them remain globally competitive and become more environmentally sustainable. The deadline for applications is 4 November. You can read more about this project at: http://bit.ly/InnovateUKOct07