Vehicle Asset Management System (VAM) products enable efficient management of vehicular fleets (e.g. fleets, emergency services and heavy equipment/machinery) and offer driver-behaviour monitoring for the vehicle insurance markets. This is achieved through incorporating cellular modems and GPS modules, both of which require antennas to function effectively.

There is often enormous market pressure to reduce the size of products of this kind, for example, so they can fit into a cramped location in the vehicle. This can transform the development of the antenna system from a straightforward integration of individual designs, focussed on particular frequency bands, to a highly complex custom development. Each antenna interacts strongly with other antennas and with components of the product (PCB, battery etc). In many ways, it can be said that the entire product becomes the antenna. Plextek began working on this technology in 1993 and since the initial brief works with multiple clients in this area through our spinout business Redtail Telematics.

In 2015, Plextek Ltd formally spun out Redtail Telematics, which provides turnkey vehicle telematics services to the fleet management and automotive insurance markets. Since 1993, Redtail have shipped more than six million tracking devices into line fit and aftermarket vehicles for stolen vehicle recovery. Redtail’s expertise in working collaboratively to answer challenging questions directs our efforts in working with OEMs to fulfil the potential of the connected vehicle, from line fit vehicle tracking with Mercedes Benz, through golf-cart battery health with Columbia Vehicle, to pothole detection with Jaguar Land Rover & Synaptiv.

Autonomous vehicles must be capable of sensing their environment, including moving objects and people, so that they can move safely with little to no human input or risk. The de-risking exercise involves testing and validation using real life scenarios in a controlled environment. The health of the decisions taken by the vehicles on-board systems need to be validated by external sources of information.

Cranfield University’s on campus test road equipped with Cameras and Lidars provides that environment. However, these external sources have limitations that needed complementary solutions to enhance the data set required for decision making.

In pursuit of achieving the next level of vehicle autonomy, Plextek assisted Cranfield University in its £1.2 million pound HumanDrive Connected and Autonomous Vehicle project. The aim of which was to test and validate the full autonomy of a vehicle as it completes an end-to-end journey.

In late 2019, HumanDrive will complete a complex real-world journey that is both driverless and human-like for other road users.

The autonomous vehicle will perform a 200+ mile route across the UK through country roads, A-roads, traffic junctions and motorways.

This marks a pivotal point for the successful deployment of an autonomous vehicle solution in the UK. https://humandrive.co.uk/

A market leader in tyre pressure monitoring was going through a transformation of their product from Analog to Digital. A product that worked in their labs and limited trials failed when put to test in the real environment.

The designers and developers were all baffled by the tricky engineering conundrum they were facing. With contracts already signed and customers waiting for the product, the client wanted to bring on board a consultant with a strong background in accelerometers and signal processing.

Design faults were identified and the product redesigned to required standards. Process improvements were put in place for long term gains. This resulted in saving major contracts and mitigated the potential financial loss for our client.

The new build-measure-learn approach reduced the development cycle from months to weeks and the actionable metrics helped streamline the right actions at the right time.