Fully autonomous vehicles are one step closer to arriving on the UK's streets with the help of Research in the Royal Borough of Greenwich with the MOVE_UK consortium.

The research aims to reduce the time taken to test automated driving systems and bring them to market. It sets out to ensure that future autonomous vehicles drive in a natural way, retaining the positive driving characteristics of a good human driver.

The project gathered data from sensors installed on a fleet of Land Rovers driven by council workers on public roads in Greenwich. They have so far completed more than 30,000 miles.

Data was selected and recorded intelligently to reduce the total volume needed to speed up validation of the automated driving functions in the real world. The MOVE_UK consortium partners were then able to analyse the data to learn how automated driving functions respond in the real world.

The next two phases of the project will see additional sensors added to the test vehicles, so by the end of the project the data gathered will be from full 360-degree surround sensing.

Greenwich is one of the UK's leading smart city areas and a centre for mobility innovation.

The Leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Cllr Denise Hyland said: 'We are pleased to be part of the MOVE_UK consortium which is delivering ground-breaking research.

'The Council is committed to understanding the impacts of autonomous driving technologies and the opportunities they will provide to local residents and businesses. The project links to our work on smart cities and smart mobility and is one a series of projects taking place in the Borough's Smart Mobility Living Lab'

Arun Srinivasan, executive vice president and head of mobility solutions at Bosch UK, said: 'This ground-breaking project is a major step for the UK in becoming a world leader in automated and connected vehicle technology.

'The data collected is particularly valuable, as it is being generated through real world driving, rather than from the test track. As the project's lead partner, we are pleased that the new validation method being trialled takes us one step closer to fully autonomous driving and to our vision of accident-free and stress-free driving for the future'