Spirent and WMG collaborate on Connected and Autonomous Vehicles

PAIGNTON, UK, 26 October, 2017: Spirent Communications plc (LSE:SPT), the world leader in GPS, Galileo and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) testing solutions, today announced a partnership with WMG’s Intelligent Vehicles Group, which takes a multi-disciplinary approach to autonomous vehicles in order to understand the full research and practical implications. WMG is leading research and education group, part of the University of Warwick.

The aim of the three-year partnership is to create robust navigation systems, which is a key component to successful development of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).

“Talk of autonomous vehicles is ubiquitous right now, but to put them into the real world we need to better understand how to provide robust navigation systems,” said Dr Matthew Higgins, Associate Professor at WMG, University of Warwick. Dr Erik Kampert, Senior Research Fellow at WMG added, “CAVs must withstand both physical and cyber challenges, and the partnership with Spirent will help to deliver this resilience.”

Mark Holbrow, Head of Engineering for Spirent’s Positioning business, said “This partnership will combine academic research and commercial technology to solve the complex, multi-disciplinary challenge of how to ensure autonomous vehicles can navigate safely, regardless of weather, location, interference or any other constraints.”

Researchers from WMG’s Intelligent Vehicles Group, in partnership with the UK based research and development team of Spirent will develop new technologies and techniques for making CAVs go where they are intended. The research will benefit from the use of Spirent’s GSS7000 Series of Multi-GNSS, Multi-frequency Simulators, which is installed in WMG’s 3xD-Simulator. This combination allows for the creation of highly accurate, realistic GNSS scenarios and environments in which autonomous vehicles can be immersed and repeatably tested.

For more information on Spirent’s GNSS testing solutions, please visit our website, or to learn more about how to detect and protect against GPS cyberthreats, download our latest White Paper.

About WMG, University of Warwick

WMG is a world leading research and education group and an academic department of the University of Warwick, established by Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya in 1980 in order to reinvigorate UK manufacturing through the application of cutting edge research and effective knowledge transfer.

WMG has pioneered an international model for working with industry, commerce and public sectors and holds a unique position between academia and industry. The Group’s strength is to provide companies with the opportunity to gain a competitive edge by understanding a company’s strategy and working in partnership with them to create, through multidisciplinary research, ground-breaking products, processes and services.

Every year WMG provides education and training to schoolchildren through to senior executives. There is a growing part-time undergraduate programme for apprentices, as well as full-time undergraduates. The postgraduate programmes have over 2,000 students, in the UK and through centres in China, India, Thailand, South Africa and Malaysia. For more information visit: www.wmg.warwick.ac.uk