Transportation is quickly evolving, and the industry is looking for innovative ways to make the delivery of goods safer, faster and more predictable. The Midlands Future Mobility consortium is based in the West Midlands, the hub of car manufacturing and automotive technologies in the UK, and has built the testbed for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and intelligent transport systems to evaluate new technologies.
Transport for West Midlands sub-contracted Siemens Mobility who have been working closely with Commsignia since May 2020 to install CAV infrastructure on the Midlands Future Mobility route, over 300 kilometers of urban, rural, suburban and highway roads. The region’s automotive sector will trial, develop and deploy technology on the route, for example utilising data to trigger warnings about traffic and road hazards. In the future autonomous vehicles will also be trialled, closely monitored by operators.
Fully integrating Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) into the devices guarantees secure communication between the Roadside Units (RSUs) and the device management. Safety is a basic requirement in the project as the trials are running on public roads.
Commsignia contribution
Commsignia supplied roadside units to the project’s multi-vendor environment, connecting the RSUs with device management developed by Siemens Mobility.
The project is among the first deployments in Europe to integrate CAV infrastructure with security PKI in order to establish fully secure communication on the V2X interface.
Outcome
The Midlands Future Mobility project paves the way to improve air quality, reduce congestion and integrate ridesharing services to the public transport services. It’s also the infrastructural foundation of the region’s planned responsive, flexible and predictable goods delivery system that will be based on autonomous pods and carriers.
