AppyWay: Pioneers in mobility announce research collaboration to support a commercial and sustainable reality for Automated Valet Parking
AppyWay: Pioneers in mobility announce research collaboration to support a commercial and sustainable reality for Automated Valet Parking
-
Automated Valet Parking (AVP) is a key feature needed in a level 4/5 automated vehicle. To identify available parking, reserve, navigate to and pay for is a complex task.
-
In particular, addressing how and where Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) park when not carrying passengers has been identified as critical for the sustainable deployment of CAVs in cities.
LONDON UK, Tuesday 31st March 2020: A consortium of mobility innovators from the public and private sectors today announced their Innovate UK funded project, ‘ParkAV’, is spearheading technical and commercial research to help realise level 4/5 CAV adoption in cities. The project aims to solve the issue of where these vehicles will go to drop off passengers, how they park between trips to recharge, access storage, or be serviced and, importantly, blend the relationship between on and off-street parking to support Mobility as a Service (MaaS) operators.
The consortium made up of Jaguar Land Rover, AppyWay (formerly AppyParking), Coventry City Council, Milton Keynes Council and managed by WhiteWillow Consulting, have focused efforts on what is seen as the core issue for the successful introduction of CAVs. How do cities, urban areas, traffic & highways planners ensure empty CAVs do not contribute to traffic and congestion?
The notion of AVP is actively being explored at a technical level by vehicle manufacturers globally. However, the ‘ParkAV’ partners suggest that whilst such engineering developments are to be welcomed, developing a scalable and sustainable framework to see AVP become commonplace, and monetised, requires a deeper public and private sector collaboration.
Ben Boutcher-West, Head of Mobility for AppyWay,
“A key deliverable within the project has been a detailed framework for both the flow of data and the flow of money to ensure AVP is viable solution. Beyond just the vehicle technology, AVP looks to deliver the function within a mobility subscription, one that manages topics such as Value Added Tax, all suppliers and even EV payment, in one technical and commercial interface. As a consortium, we have maintained a customer focus, ensuring they would be set down compliantly at their chosen destination. That means consumers no longer would have to enter the off-street facility at all and enjoy a much more convenient and hassle-free service, dropped off at their point of interest.”
Sunil Budheo, Innovation Manager at Coventry City Council continues,
“When thinking about what our constituents might expect in the future with the rise of CAVs, it’s important to focus on not only optimizing the user experience but also making sure the needs of the city are considered. Drop-offs and pick-ups for CAV journeys are likely to be on-street and close to points of interest, so both on-street and nearby off-street parking locations need to be part of our thinking. We must mitigate the circulation of empty vehicles on our streets and we’re proud to be continuing our innovative work in this space as part of the ParkAV project.”
Brian Matthews. Head of Transport Innovation at Milton Keynes Council notes,
“We have recently seen practical demonstrations of CAVs operating in both Milton Keynes and Coventry, so we are very confident that self-driving vehicles parking themselves is not too far away. ParkAV gives us the opportunity to understand how this technology can be best applied in city environments, maximizing the benefits for travellers and cities.”
The group have uncovered the baseline requirements and considerations across four key areas:
- User experience: what do consumers/passengers want and expect?
- Commercial model: how are all parties active within an AVP session compensated? How will the market opportunity be unlocked to enable scale?
- Integration: how do the physical and digital realms integrate across on and off-street infrastructure? How do cleaning and valet services access vehicles?
- Local government integration: off-street parking works best when it compliments on-street provision and supports local transport and traffic policies. Solutions that support both are important requirements for the mobility-as-a-service marketplace.
Key to the research is to understand the detailed flow of money and data that will enable multiple on and off-street operators and service providers to work together, presenting the operator and end consumer with a single interface with which to do business. This will maintain safe and reliable mobility for consumers. A comprehensive data and money exchange model has been developed; ensuring systems scale across multiple sites and are commercially and socially viable.
The work from the ParkAV project enables the sector to deliver CAV’s in a more integrated way. A key point is that in order to scale the rollout of shared, connected and one-day autonomous vehicles, through a concept the consortium call “MaaSpark” (MaaSpark is the concept of parking for MaaS providing dynamic kerbside access and integrated payments), further steps are required to make parking better for everyone.
We don’t have to wait to take these steps; they can be implemented ahead of the CAV technology itself. The steps laid out by the consortium form a “call to action” for government and an opportunity for all sectors to collaborate further.
Based on their findings, the ParkAV project suggests the following to central government:
- Change the Road Traffic Act to allow short term parking (“kerb-kissing”) in bays dedicated for other users and allow dynamic payment / reservation of parking bays (this also works for human driven vehicles)
- Allow digital and dynamic Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) captured from roadside data to enable digital coverage for the whole UK. Within this, renaming from Traffic Regulation Order to “Mobility Enabling Order” will emphasise the change in thinking
- Mandate standards that support interoperability from parking payment systems (as is starting to happen with Electric Vehicles for both charge point access and payment accounts)
- Don’t just look at CAV vehicle capability, but have a customer and business centric view of how they influence land use and development planning to encourage adaptability of land use and growth with a technology agnostic approach
For local government, they suggest:
- Develop new approaches to more open parking contracts, based on outcome based Key Performance Indicators with more risk taken by the contractor. This would allow parking to move from a negatively viewed labour intensive enforcement model to an outcome driven enabling model to support social good, whilst preserving current income levels from “parking”
- See MaaSpark as an important enabler of MaaS, rather than a competitor/ blocker to it
- Develop ways to charge wholesale prices for parking by changing contract approaches
- Consider and plan now for future AV parking within new developments, allowing for future change of use.
AppyWay, Jaguar Land Rover and the wider UK industry then have opportunities to exploit these actions, enable changes, and help to provide better parking for all, not just autonomous vehicles.
Colin Teed, Lead Engineer, Advanced Electrical Research at Jaguar Land Rover said, “The ParkAV project demonstrates the key role that AVP could play in the future of mobility. The potential for AVP to reduce the time and stress when parking a vehicle is an exciting step forward in helping Jaguar Land Rover to reduce congestion in the future. By developing premium features, which enhance our customers driving experiences we can achieve our Destination Zero mission.”
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any of the partners should you wish to know more about the findings.
The ParkAV project is part-funded by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), delivered in partnership with Innovate UK. It is part of the government’s £100 million Intelligent Mobility Fund, supporting the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge.
As a key part of the UK government’s modern Industrial Strategy, the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge was announced in 2017 to encourage and support extraordinary innovation in UK engineering and technology, making the UK a world leader within the transport industries.
This includes facilitating profound changes in transport technologies and business models, to make the movement of people, goods and services across the nation greener, safer, easier and more reliable.
Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover is the UK’s largest automotive manufacturer, built around two iconic British car brands: Land Rover, the world’s leading manufacturer of premium all-wheel-drive vehicles; and Jaguar, one of the world’s premier luxury sports saloon and sports car marques.
At Jaguar Land Rover, we are driven by a desire to deliver class-leading vehicles, which will provide experiences our customers will love, for life. Our products are in demand around the globe. In 2019 Jaguar Land Rover sold 557,706 vehicles in 127 countries.
We support around 260,000 people through our retailer network, suppliers and local businesses. At heart we are a British company, with two major design and engineering sites, three vehicle manufacturing facilities, an Engine Manufacturing Centre and soon to be opened Battery Assembly Centre. We also have vehicle plants in China, Brazil, India, Austria and Slovakia. We have seven technology hubs. In the UK these are based in Manchester, Warwick (NAIC) and London. Globally these are located in Shannon, Ireland, Portland, USA, Budapest, Hungary and Changshu, China.
We have a portfolio of electrified products across our model range, embracing fully electric, plug-in hybrid and mild hybrid vehicles as well as continuing to offer the latest diesel and petrol engines. All new Jaguar and Land Rover vehicle models offer the option of electrification, giving our customers even more choice.
AppyWay
AppyWay exists to help cities thrive from the kerb up. We see the kerb as a catalyst – the key to powering progress with the most pressing urban mobility challenges. Our platform of data, APIs and tools provide digital kerbside management solutions that enable intelligent mobility, better connecting cities with people and businesses.
Through close collaboration and industry leading partnerships, the AppyWay platform effectively acts as a ‘future mobility’ conduit between the public and private sector:
Kerbside Management | B2G
AppyKerb, our Govtech stack, is a complete kerbside management platform. With AppyKerb, Local Authorities are empowered to commoditise and open up their assets. This enables rich data-driven insights and digital access solutions for everyone using our kerbs.
Intelligent Mobility | B2B
AppyWay business solutions keep people, goods and cities flowing. A full eco-system of kerbside data APIs, payment solutions and CAV integrations improves kerb interactions for local enterprises, customers, deliveries and fleets alike.
Milton Keynes Council
Milton Keynes council is a unitary authority in the South East Midlands. Constructed as new town, the area has seen consistent and rapid growth over the past 50 years, making it one of the UKs most successful economic growth areas. Home to 280,000 residents the city is characterized by high levels of private car use linked to significant levels of city centre parking areas, making the efficient management of parking a key priority for the city
Coventry City Council
Coventry City is the 12th largest in UK and the 2nd largest in West Midlands and part of the West Midlands Combined Authority. It has a Long-established link with Motor Manufacturers, Daimler built the 1st British car in 1897 it is Home for London Taxi (Electric). It was the first city to trial Autonomous Vehicles in a live environment it has provide a test bed environment for testing connected and autonomous vehicles in a live environment. It is the first city to trial digital traffic regulation orders and is developing autonomous valet parking. Coventry is preparing for City of Culture 2021 and for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, where we will be Showcasing to the world our leadership in this area.