UK to Have a New Safety Research Center

The construction of a new UK center for the development of intelligent transport innovations is to begin in Nuneaton, Warwickshire by the spring of 2010. The center, called innovITS – ADVANCE, is the result of a unique collaboration between innovITS, MIRA and TRL, with £6.5 million funding support provided Advantage West Midlands.

The center’s activity will focus on collision avoidance systems, driver behavior studies, vulnerable road-user detection systems and road sign detection as well as traffic management and advanced driver-assistance systems.

“Intelligent transportation systems offer significant potential to improve the quality of life and sustainability of road transportation throughout the world,” CEO Phil Pettitt was quoted as saying by telegraph.co.uk at a ceremony to mark the first phase of innovITS-ADVANCE.

“A major obstacle to the realization of products based on these technologies has been the lack of a dedicated, safe, secure and comprehensively equipped testing infrastructure. The creation of innovITS – ADVANCE aims to remove this roadblock,” he added.

The first phase of development will involve the construction of a city circuit, which will include a network of roads, traffic islands, roundabouts and controlled intersections in order to replicate the real-life situations. The city circuit alone will be based on a footprint of about 120,000 square meters.

Each of the test circuits of innovITS – ADVANCE will be equipped with various telecommunications networks including GSM, GPRS, WiFi and several monitoring systems. Each of these systems will be controlled by the center’s customers in order to test new telematics-based innovations in any real-world situation.