Leading autonomy firm shifts focus from self-driving cars

British technology firm Oxbotica is leading the charge towards autonomous vehicles, which it believes we could see out and about “over the next number of years”, but it isn’t focused on cars, instead looking at “where the world needs [autonomy] the most”. This includes jobs that are dangerous, mundane and very specific, said CEO Gavin Jackson: “Our vision is to unlock the value of self- driving technology but where there are the most pressing and urgent requirements.” Jackson added that the Oxford-based firm has adopted a more strategic approach to self-driving, which it terms “universal autonomy”. This move away from cars comes despite Oxbotica having a proven pedigree in developing tech that works on public roads – as was demonstrated by participation in the UK government-backed Project Endeavour in 2021, in which level-four Ford Mondeos were trialled in Birmingham, London and Oxford. But it mirrors the industry trend, the allure of self-driving cars having faded. Last year, major makers pulled back on investment. Most prominently, Ford and the Volkswagen Group ended their backing for autonomous vehicle developer Argo AI to focus instead on their own driver assistance tech. Meanwhile, there is clearly an appetite for autonomous tech away from public roads. In January, Oxbotica secured $140 million (£116m) of extra funding, mostly from existing shareholders BP Ventures, Ocado and ZF – all of which will benefit from different applications of its tech. Jackson said: “You will see smaller vehicles doing specific tasks for the likes of BP on solar farms, wind farms, refineries and suchlike, where there are requirements for surveillance, for example. The application of autonomy will mean that no human needs to waste their time driving up and down a solar farm. “You will see shared mobility shuttles here in Europe and in the US driven by Oxbotica with companies like NEVS [the Sino-Swedish company that rose from the ashes of Saab], ZF and others. “And you will see groceries delivered over the next number of years as well [with Ocado].” Another partner is Wenco, a Canadian firm that manages fleets for heavy industries. This relationship will deliver “trucks driven by Oxbotica that are doing the dirty, dangerous, mundane and challenging work of mining, quarrying and aggregate collection”. Jackson considers the tech that Oxbotica offers to be an operating system with many different applications, citing Microsoft’s Windows as a comparison. “We’ve been developing the general platform for different applications,” he said, “which means that we can time-order the applications that are going to deliver value first and fastest. And that’s typically off public highway to start with, on public highway in very limited terms and then over time gradually getting more and more complex.” This means Oxbotica’s tech will be able to work for an array of transport applications, including cars. However, the time for that isn’t now, said Jackson. Instead, “the world is pivoting to applications of autonomy where the needs are greatest”. “We see passenger cars and robotaxis as being a viable application in time; it’s just not the first,” said Jackson. “But you will certainly see vehicles on public highways driven by Oxbotica that carry humans. “The most urgent need for human passengers in urban centres is shared mobility – so the form factor of those vehicles will be shared mobility, microbuses and shuttles that will leverage existing infrastructure like bus lanes.” Jackson expects Oxbotica to play an integral role as the development of vehicle autonomy continues. But he feels that even two decades from now, we are unlikely to see the sort of self-driving utopia that some people once envisaged for public roads. He said: “Off public highways, autonomy will continue to solve many, many more complex challenges. The new normal over the next 20 years will be that there’s an augmentation between human- and software-driven machines that do the work that’s dangerous, dirty and hard to supply in the job market. On public highways, you will see cities augment their fleets with a lot more fixed-lane, shared- mobility microbus shuttles. “And on what we currently refer to as driver-assistance capabilities – where the human has been responsible for the experience and the software in the vehicle is doing some of the driving – I think that the balance between human responsibility and software responsibility will shift further towards software. But not completely.”