Zero Point Motion win grant to develop inertial sensors for automotive market

Zero Point Motion (ZPM) with collaborators University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), WAE Technologies (WAE) and the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) have been awarded a £1.4 million grant for a collaborative project: Photonic Inertial Sensors for Automotive (PISA).  

 PISA is part of CCAV’s Commercialising CAM Supply Chain Competition (CCAMSC). 

 Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) Inertial measurement units (IMUs) typically exhibit a high degree of noise and drift, limiting their use in safety and mission critical systems, such as autonomous vehicle navigation.  

 We will progress towards automotive certification of ZPM’s optically-enhanced chip-scale IMUs for tracking motion which are 100x more sensitive than automotive sensors available today. This is a key step in the development of Autonomous Vehicles and progression towards SAE Autonomy Levels 3 to 5.  

UWE Bristol will verify and validate how IMUs sit within the navigation stack of an autonomous vehicle and how safe and resilient they are. This will involve simulation and testing, exposing ZPM IMUs to different operating conditions, and setting resilience metrics. 

 Motorsports experts, WAE will integrate ZPM’s IMUs into motorsport vehicles, providing functional testing in challenging environments: high temperatures, high-g cornering and large accelerations. 

 In parallel to the technical work plan taking place from August 2023 to March 2025, UWE Bristol and RIN will organise events , one at the end of 2023/start of 2024 and the second in mid 2024, to enable discussion on topics around sensor fusion, safety and resilience with the UK Position, Navigation and Timing community. 

 This project will accelerate ZPM’s roadmap into the automotive sector bringing to the UK a key strategic sovereign capability. 

 The Commercialising CAM programme is funded by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, a joint unit between the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and the Department for Transport (DfT) and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK and Zenzic. 

 The CCAM Supply Chain competition was launched in October 2022 to support the delivery of early commercialisable Connected and Automated Mobility technologies, products and services and is part of the Government’s vision for self-driving vehicles. Connected and automated mobility 2025: realising the benefits of self-driving vehicles.