A company spun out from the University of Oxford in
2014 to develop a ‘brain’ for driverless cars has won a Financial
Times ArcelorMittal Boldness in
Business award.
Oxbotica carried off
the ‘Smaller Company’ award for its achievements in creating
artificial intelligence software for the next generation of
autonomous road vehicles.
Creating an autonomous control system
With support from Innovate UK, Oxbotica has developed an
autonomous control system called Selenium. It can work on any
vehicle, including forklifts and cargo pods.
The software uses data from laser and camera sensors mounted on
the vehicle to find out where it is, what’s around it, and to
calculate a safe and efficient route.
The technology is already running on Oxbotica’s fleet of
vehicles, including a last-mile delivery van, the ESA Mars Rover,
and the £8 million GATEway(Greenwich Automated
Transport Environment) project in London.
Creating value through intellectual property
Originating from the university’s Oxford Robotics
Institute (ORI) research group, the company has spurned
conventional financing through external investment.
Dr Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica, said:
We didn’t take the easy money. We’ve got very specific
methodology to creating value through intellectual property and
opportunities to license that. We stuck steadfastly to that
approach. It’s nice to have a big investor but we didn’t want
that to change our focus or direction.
Oxbotica began with 4 employees and has now grown to 30, with the
intention of doubling that number this year.
Dr Smith added:
We’ve opened up a third office in Oxford, a full fleet of
autonomous vehicles, and a dedicated test track and workshop.
Our customer base is expanding rapidly and we’re growing fast
to meet this demand. This award is a major deal to a small
company like us.
Oxbotica’s success was recognised alongside other winners,
including Google’s Deepmind, Dollar Shave
Club, Dong
Energy and Preferred Networks.
