Melbourne “paving the way for autonomous vehicles”

The University of Melbourne is working with industry partners on a project which could “pave the way for connected and autonomous vehicles”. In a statement issued on Friday (6 January), the University announced that the fringe of Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD) are set to become a “connected transport living lab” – which will draw together data from cars, vans, bikes and public transport vehicles in order to “prevent traffic jams and crashes, and cut travel times and carbon emissions”.

The University signed an MoU on Friday with 17 private and public sector project partners.

According to the University: “A 1.2 square km ‘test bed’, taking in busy freight and commuter routes and shopping strips — including Australia’s most congested road, Hoddle Street —will be fitted with thousands of sensors, enabling communication between thousands of devices and data sets that have until now been islands —  such as tram and train movements.

“The Dean of the Melbourne School of Engineering, Professor Iven Mareels, said this would pave the way for connected and autonomous vehicles.”

Project leader Majid Sarvi, Professor in Transport for Smart Cities at the University, commented: “Intelligent transport systems will analyse this data and deliver insights into traffic planning, pedestrian flows, public transport efficiency and freight movements.”

The University’s project partners are: VicRoads, Public Transport Victoria (PTV), Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources, the City of Melbourne, the City of Yarra, ITS Australia, CUBIC, PTV-AG, HERE Maps, Siemens, Ericsson, Telstra, nbn, WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff, HMI Technologies, Transdev Melbourne, ConnectEast and Mobility as a Service Australia.