A press release from Cranfield University reveals that:

A car developed with advanced vehicle engineering research and testing facilities at Cranfield University has successfully completed the UK’s longest and most complex self-navigated journey. Travelling 230 miles on UK roads from the Nissan European Technical Centre in Cranfield up to its factory in Sunderland, the autonomous car journey was alongside regular road users and marks a significant milestone in the development of autonomous cars.

Here’s a video of the autonomous Nissan LEAF’s “Grand Drive” road trip:

The Cranfield press release continues:

The HumanDrive project – jointly funded by the UK Government through the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Innovate UK, and nine other consortium partners – includes:

• Nissan – Lead partner and leading the autonomous vehicle (AV) development
• Hitachi – Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide human-like control and perception
• University of Leeds – Understanding humanistic driving and its application to AVs whilst also developing a driver risk model
• Connected Places Catapult (CPC) – Project management, communications and marketing activity, dissemination and safety case elements of the project
• HORIBA MIRA – Provider of test facilities, supported safety aspects of the project
• SBD Automotive – Cyber security support and AV Human machine Interface (HMI) studies
• Atkins Ltd – Provision of a Cyber Security Framework
• Aimsun Ltd – Studying the impact of AVs on the transport system
• Highways England – Understanding the infrastructure needs for AV deployment

The Grand Drive journey was successfully completed on 28 November 2019, with two engineers on board and monitoring the vehicle’s actions at all times. Both were fully trained to conduct autonomous vehicle testing, with one behind the wheel and ready to take control if required, and the second supervising the car’s control and monitoring systems.