WMG at the University of Warwick has begun work with a consortium of 11 organisations (led by Latent Logic in Oxford) on a £2.7 million UK Government-funded project to create a highly accurate virtual-reality simulator environment, including artificial intelligence (AI) trained models of pedestrians and road users, to test connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).

OmniCAV, which was awarded funding as part of a competition run by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Innovate UK, will be fed highly detailed scans of real roads, traffic camera data, accident data and near-miss analyses.

These inputs will be used to create a high-fidelity model of real-world roads, which will be populated with realistic AI-based road users.

This model will used to create an extensive open-access library of VR simulator scenarios to test connected and autonomous vehicles.

OmniCAV will lay the foundations for the development of a comprehensive, robust and secure simulator, aimed at providing a certification tool for CAVs that can be used by regulatory and accreditation bodies, insurers and manufacturers to accelerate the safe development of CAVs.

The project will validate the realism of the simulator by comparing its outputs with data measured for the equivalent locations and scenarios in the real world.

This will include tests on proving grounds and open roads.

The project will culminate in a CAV being put through the entire end-to-end OmniCAV testing programme, from simulator-only, to controlled environment, to on-road testing.