Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre speeds up access to driverless technology
The Covid-19 pandemic may have put the brakes on a lot of local businesses adopting new technologies. Our 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC), however, is helping small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Surrey area gain access to cutting-edge resources, with two new additions to our fleet of autonomous vehicles.
The first of two StreetDrone vehicles 5GIC has purchased for use in collaboration with SMEs
The StreetDrone vehicles will offer SMEs the chance to collaborate with 5GIC's 5G test network
Thanks to 5GIC’s ongoing relationship with the EM3 Local Enterprise Partnership, a group of private and public sector organisations who create prosperity through innovation, we've been able to purchase two StreetDrone e-NV200 vehicles.
These are equipped for driverless operation and can be controlled over our 5G private network, a resource the EM3 funded and 5GIC built over four locations, with masts at Surrey Research Park, Aldershot, the 5G Living Lab, and Whitehill and Bordon Enterprise Zone.
“The plan behind buying these vehicles is so the SMEs who are already partnering with us can experiment with them to help progress our collective autonomous vehicle research into 5G and beyond,” says Rahulan Yogaratnam, Chief Architect at 5GIC.
“It will give the SMEs access to future-facing technologies when 5G technology properly launches across the UK, without them needing to integrate in a hard way. This in turn gives them the chance to speed up their integration with artificial intelligence and machine-learning advances to develop innovative apps and tools.”
Find out more about 5GIC and our Institute for Communications Systems.