GovWire

Oxbotica has been funded by the Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) to assess performance of an innovative vision-based localisation systems in off-road vehicle applications.

The company used a newly developed vision based localisation system and compared it to a laser localisation system across thousands of miles of driving. It then analysed the accuracy of the different systems and found the vision based system to be far superior to both laser and global positioning system (GPS).

Oxbotica sees a number of possible applications for future use, such as the ability to localise assets just using a camera, without reliance on GPS. It could provide a low cost system that can operate covertly in an off-road environment, and which is capable of being the primary input sensor for autonomous vehicle localisation and perception.

Dr Graeme Smith, CEO, Oxbotica says:

The funding received from CDE has been invaluable in helping us validate that our on-road approach to low cost localisation can be successfully applied to off-road applications. Our next autonomous vehicle in phase 2 will use the results of this first phase of work to operate in unstructured and off-road environments.

Founded in 2014, Oxbotica is a spin out of Oxford Universitys Mobile Robotics Group and was created to enable customers to access and integrate a huge portfolio of mobile autonomy intellectual property. Oxbotica currently has around 25 employees.

About CDE

CDE funds novel, high-risk, high-potential-benefit research. We work with the broadest possible range of science and technology providers, including academia and small companies, to develop cost-effective capabilities for UK armed forces and national security.

CDE is part of Dstl.

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