Transport and mobility services company ESP Group is to join a driverless car pilot to help ensure the service works for travellers.

The pilot will include the design, development and testing of driverless pods in on-road public trials at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, including creating systems and technologies that will allow the vehicles to navigate safely on pedestrian and road environments.

The ESP Group will help create a customer-centric offering including service welcome material, ticketing and contact centre support during core service hours. New approaches to delivery of these services will be evaluated for the duration of the pilot, including trialling customer support through in-vehicle communications direct to drivers. In addition ESP Group will be leading work on developing the business models to make the service prosper throughout UK and beyond. 

Terry Dunn, CEO of ESP Group, said: “As an organisation, we want to be at the forefront of innovation in the UK and help push forward world-class developments in public transport and future mobility. We intend to take a strong role in designing the details of vehicle deployment from a user’s perspective across the city for public transportation uses, as well as be involved in designing ways drivers can easily benefit from this technology.

A collection of academia, businesses and public sector authorities, ESP Group is part of 20 partnering organisations to create the CAPRI (Connected & Autonomous POD on-Road Implementation) consortium. Together a range of skills and knowledge will be combined to build the next generation of PODs and autonomous vehicle technology.

Lee Street, director and head of technology services – Europe, AECOM, said: “We’re delighted to have ESP Group on-board as one of our expert collaborators. Their expertise and track record in excelling customer expectations throughout the public transport industry meant that this partnership was an obvious choice for us. We look forward to developing this relationship and pushing this exciting initiative forward.”

Dunn continued: “All our activities are about helping transport operators and service providers design mobility services to improve the customer journey. By partnering with AECOM, we work collaboratively towards creating a driverless infrastructure which is both attractive to use and easy to do so as we move into this very exciting period of travel innovation.”

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