Discover CAM Scale-Up through Eloy.
Damian Horton introduces Eloy and outlines their CAM Scale-Up journey.
Learn more about their specialty, the testing process and the results.
Eloy and the Zenzic CAM Scale-Up Programme
Implementing technology that acts as the ‘noble guide’ to multi-vehicle coordination
Eloy focuses on enhancing and optimising the communication and coordination for increasingly connected and automated vehicles while still giving drivers a strong sense of overall control.
The challenge of coordinating multiple vehicles using the same roadway has been around as long as the first vehicles themselves. Human interaction, on-board signalling, signage and physical infrastructure are some of the many ways vehicles interact to successfully share and safely navigate the same space. Eloy has developed advanced multi-vehicle coordination technology that allows any number of connected and autonomous vehicles to communicate with each other to improve safety and efficiency on the road network.
The business was founded in late 2019, just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. By the end of 2020, the Eloy Drive app had been authorised on Apple CarPlay and was later approved by Android Auto in 2021.
Although the Eloy app is public-facing, the Eloy team refer to it as their research ‘apparatus’ and consider themselves as a primarily B2B company. The consumer-facing aspect is, at the moment, a great way of gathering data and running innovative pilots and technology trials, which then helps improve the backend software and Eloy’s B2B offering. The plan is for it to proliferate into third party apps and be adopted by OEMs for inclusion directly into their vehicles.
What makes Eloy special?
The most obvious benefit Eloy’s tech offers to connected vehicles is that it literally allows them to see around corners, helping to avoid possible dangerous accidents and costly collisions, especially on narrower roadways and in rural areas.
Damian Horton, Founder and CEO of Eloy explains:
At Eloy we focus on a niche part of technology called multi-vehicle coordination. This is how we orchestrate the movement of vehicles across the road network. This isn’t a new thing, the humble roundabout has been around for over 100 years, and that coordinates cars as roads merge, providing priorities which help more efficient and safer traffic flow.
Multi-vehicle coordination from Eloy’s perspective takes a digital format. Our solution intends to make roads more efficient, safer, with less congestion, and therefore in time will lead to less pollution.”
As well as facilitating effective Multi-Vehicle Coordination (MVC) in more obvious situations like turning, stopping and passing, Eloy’s technology is focusing on vehicle coordination in more condensed settings where high levels of coordination are essential, like parking and mitigating congestion in high-volume venue settings (e.g. festivals and busy construction sites).
Eloy’s testing journey
Demonstrating how machine learning can elevate road navigation to the next level through CAM Testbed UK
Eloy’s testing took place at UTAC Millbrook’s proving ground and HORIBA MIRA. They initially deployed 10 connected cars which navigated the same roadway with narrowed points. This was to demonstrate a simple example of how MVC can be used to allow cars to pass safely on narrow rural roads by informing some vehicles to “stop and wait” and others to “proceed”. Eloy built artificial intelligence software to control these messages with a technique called reinforcement learning and by using digital twins of the road network. The later tests saw the number of cars involved increasing to up to 20 vehicles to add an extra layer of complexity to the scenario.
Throughout the process, the scenarios became more sophisticated. Only some cars were equipped with Eloy’s technology to test how well it performed with a mix of connected and non-connected vehicles. This was designed to aid their understanding about the threshold participation rates.
Damian shared: “The efficacy of our technology became clear pretty quickly. The lap times of the professional drivers reduced by 10% when using Eloy’s solution. This is extremely encouraging when we consider that professional drivers are already adept at handling complicated road scenarios. If we compare this to the average driver who would likely find these situations trickier, we can confidently expect a positive impact when using our technology. This includes reduced risk escalations and quicker journey times.”
What would success look like?
The next step for Eloy is to gain more external investment and commercial partnerships. They also plan to start carrying out public tests with hundreds of vehicles equipped with their technology. This includes road tests with commercial fleets, as well as testing at events and festivals. This will enable them to further prove the efficacy of their solution.
In the future they hope to see OEMs and end users adopt Eloy in their vehicles to help navigate the road more efficiently.
Programme results
Eloy’s testing programme has resulted in business success across three core aspects.
Robustness
Participating in Zenzic’s CAM Scale-Up programme enabled Eloy to repeatedly test their tech to ensure it works as expected.
Efficacy
Eloy were able to make interventions that impacted the drivers behaviour during testing, enabling them to measure the positive benefits of the technology.
User Experience
Feedback from the drivers lead to Eloy adapting their app notifications to achieve an optimised interface.
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