A new round of funding from the UK government, announced today [12 December], has been confirmed for the development of early stage research projects to support innovative transport solutions and associated technologies.
The programme is intended to both drive UK-based innovation and generate growth across the sector. It closely follows last week’s announcement of £73m for UK-based clean transport projects.
The Department for Transport has said as many as 60 projects could win a share of the £1.85m fund.
Some previous winners include projects trialling drones to improve mobile signal for rescue missions, the use of artificial Intelligence (AI) to monitor the condition of bridges and researching shape-changing haptic technology to support visually-impaired people.
The scheme, named the Transport Research and Innovation Grant (TRIG), covers five targeted funding calls, as well as an open call for any transport-related idea.
The named areas are maritime decarbonisation, the future of freight, local transport decarbonisation, transport resilience to severe weather and flooding and improving the rail passenger experience.
Nicola Yates OBE, CEO of Connected Places Catapult, a governmental innovation agency, said: “The UK’s innovation ecosystem is adept at developing solutions to complex problems.
“Government-backed projects like TRIG feed the early stages of the UK transport innovation pipeline and help us identify and nurture viable solutions to some of our biggest challenges.
“The TRIG 2022 call is focused on finding the next wave of state-of-the-art transport solutions, enabling the creative innovators to propel us along the road to a greener future whilst driving growth.”
In addition to industry applicants, TRIG will also accept submissions from academics and university researchers.
Since TRIG was launched in 2014, the government reports that more than £10m in funding has been awarded to support almost 300 projects, with the three hundredth set to be awarded through this current funding round.
