CAM Pathfinder: Enable

To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be one of the following:

• a UK registered business of any size
• a local authority
• a transport authority

To work alone your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.

If the lead organisation is a local authority or a transport authority, it must collaborate with at least one grant claiming business.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

To be an eligible collaboration, you must ensure that no one partner accounts for more than 70% of the eligible costs. The collaborating organisations must be separate legal and non-linked entities.

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £2 million and £4 million
• last between 18 and 24 months
• start by 1 June 2026
• end by 31 May 2028

Any funded organisation must carry out their project work in the UK and must intend to exploit the project results in the UK.

The aim of this competition is to support the UK Government’s ambition to advance Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) services in high value areas into commercial offerings. This will be achieved by funding trials led by service operators or entities who benefit directly from the end use of CAM in live or analogous settings.

The design of the trial services should be dictated by a ‘market pull’ rather than a ‘technology push’. Suitably mature technologies should be used in order to answer commercial operational business case requirements, rather than developing technologies during the project.

Your proposal must outline a project for a live trial with real stakeholders, to demonstrate clear potential towards a commercial CAM service.

Your proposal must identify the type of service to be trialled, for example, passenger services, freight, last-mile delivery, and identify key aspects of the deployment domain.

Your proposal must also clearly identify all key roles and responsibilities including, but not limited to: the Authorised Self Driving Entity (ASDE), the No-User-in-Charge Operator (NUiCO) and the land owner or body responsible for the operating domain. Where relevant, connectivity providers, maintenance organisations and other key organisations should be identified.

Your project must

• trial suitably mature CAM technologies in a plausible commercial service, develop operational models and support business case definitions for a future CAM deployment at scale
• use CAM technologies to advance commercial readiness to deploy CAM services in specifically defined locations in the UK
• be led by the service operator or entity who will benefit directly from the end use (the service) of the CAM technology deployment; they must quantify these benefits as part of the business case analysis during the project
• be conducting substantial trial operations to a level of maturity that actionable business cases can be defined for the service, a derivative of the service or for similar deployments elsewhere
• have the aim to lead to larger scale deployment opportunities which will drive measurable economic benefit to the project lead and the UK

Adaptation of CAM technologies are permitted to enable trials to be undertaken, such as route mapping, logistics on-site support and debugging.

Technology providers may build relationships with future operators to develop business cases, however core development of technologies is excluded from this competition.

If your project uses public roads or other public places it must follow the Department for Transport (DfT) Code of Practice: Automated Vehicle Trialling. If your project intendeds to pilot without a safety driver present, you must seek to comply with the associated requirements expected to be published during 2026.

Terminology in your application must comply with the meanings as per BSI Flex 1890 v6.0: 2025-03 Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM), Vocabulary.

Your project must consider, analyse and report on each of the following aspects:

• operational models, role definitions, legal and ethical liability areas across roles
• routes towards compliance with current, near term and likely long term regulatory requirements for vehicle approval, authorisation and service licensing
• detailed solutions to training of developers, operators and maintenance staff, and where appropriate, remote monitoring, operating staff
• virtual and physical verification and assurance processes required to meet stakeholder requirements
• in-service use monitoring
• data; including collection, reduction, handling, processing, storage on and off-vehicle
• safety cases, including content of versions for different stakeholders such as ASDE, NUiCO, insurance companies, local authorities, emergency services and the public
• insurance engagement and insurance cost modelling
• infrastructure requirements, including connectivity, remote monitoring and operations
• scalability to a wider customer market and assessment of willingness to pay for services such as those trialled in the project
• establishing supplier requirements for vehicle platforms based on the operator and users’ needs

Innovate UK Business Connect will hold a briefing webinar on Friday 24 October, 10:00 – 12:00. Click here to register for a webinar place. A recording will be available afterwards.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Transport team.