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Cities 2050: Welcome To Our Driverless Future!

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Date/Time
06 November 2019
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Location
MMU Business School, All Saints Campus
Oxford Road
Manchester

Categories


Come and look inside Westfield’s POD. This connected autonomous vehicle is the UK’s first platooning vehicle currently being trialled on public roads as part of the Synergy research project at Manchester Metropolitan University. Here is a chance to learn about driverless vehicles and discuss their potential and risk with expert engineers and researchers. The frustrating experience of short journeys and lack of service provision often puts people off from using public transport. It is so much easier to get in a taxi and travel door-to-door. The driverless POD addresses this issue: it is a convenient, low-cost, reliable, on-demand and shared service that links transport hubs and creates a seamless home-to-destination travel experience.

The original POD system has been used for many years serving Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 POD Parking. Manchester Metropolitan researchers from the Complexity Planning and Urbanism Research Lab are now working with Westfield to trial the vehicle for autonomous transit between Stockport Railway Station and Manchester Airport.

During this event, you can sit inside the POD, find out how it works and discover how an autonomous shuttle service can transform the way people travel around cities. Westfield staff and Manchester Metropolitan University researchers will be happy to tell you all about the POD and the road trials as well as answer all your questions about driverless car technology, safety and future developments.

This session is part of Cities 2050, a day of talks, activities and interactive sessions to get you thinking about how urban life may change over the next 30 years. Researchers from the Synergy project will also give a presentation and show simulations about connected autonomous vehicles as part of a series of talks during the afternoon programme.