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Like any other organisation, Darwin Innovation Group has its own culture, its own atmosphere and its own relationship with its employees. Written in collaboration with Darwin’s operations manager, Sophia Ward, here’s a look at Darwin’s employment philosophy and what it’s like to work here. Freedom and flexibility Darwin is a relatively hands-off, flexible employer. To an extent, we allow employees to create their own role. There are certain things they need to do, but we don’t require people to check off very specific boxes, such as ‘you must code this many lines in a day’. What we do is present our employees with goals and let them decide how they’d like to reach them. If you’re a developer, for example, we might ask you to write code that lets us do a certain thing, but you’re free to decide on how to approach that challenge. When employees have freedom to manoeuvre within the goals they’re set, their achievements can become a creative expression of their skills, rather than simply a matter of hitting every point on a checklist. Creativity is essential for any research and development company, so it’s important for our employees not to feel restricted. We want everyone who works for us to be able to find fulfilment in what they do, in a way that lets us continue innovating. We also offer flexibility in working hours and structure. Even in those distant days before the COVID-19 pandemic, we didn’t demand that employees be in the office for particular hours; we’ve never been a traditional 9-to-5 employer. If you do your best work remotely at odd hours, we want to accommodate that where we can. The pandemic has led many people to change the way they work, and to question the traditional work week. Many people have realised that they work better in a more flexible structure, and are looking for employers who will continue to let them choose their own work patterns in the future. We can offer that flexibility to our employees. Support and guidance Although Darwin values freedom and flexibility in work, we also want to make sure employees have support and guidance when they need it. One way we do this is by having a mentoring programme for new employees and graduates. If someone’s never worked before, or has never done the particular job they’ve been recruited for, they’re assigned a mentor when they come aboard. At any time, an employee can go to their mentor to talk about their work, discuss any problems they’re facing and ask for advice. In addition to making sure they know who they can contact if they need help, this system means that new employees can get to know an existing member of the organisation well. It’s possible to feel slightly disconnected from an organisation when you’re working remotely, which, as mentioned, Darwin allowed even before the COVID-19 pandemic. With a mentoring system, new employees have an anchor in the form of their mentor, who can then help introduce them to other members of the team. Although individual employees do have line managers, Darwin has a very flat management structure. Our employees are free to collaborate with each other based on who has the right skills for a task, regardless of their respective roles. These opportunities for close collaboration encourage employees to get to know and respect each other. Diversity Our team is diverse, and we think working with different perspectives helps each individual team member communicate better while also inspiring them to innovate. At the very least, we want our team to reflect the diverse society in which we operate. Though all employers have a duty not to discriminate, there can be a wide disparity between what an organisation may say or intend and what it may actually do to ensure inclusivity. At Darwin, we try to design our policies to be actively supportive of a diverse workforce and the needs each team member may have. We are proud to support our colleagues with caring responsibilities: something that has often been overlooked by employers, despite one in seven working people also being carers. So are we ‘done’ with diversity? Not at all. A lack of gender diversity is something that’s already been noted as a wider issue in the tech industry. Though Darwin does have senior female leaders, the reality is that our board and our teams are not as gender diverse as we’d like, so one of our goals is to attract more female and nonbinary talent. Diversity isn’t a fixed target or a checkbox we can mark complete. We always strive to do better, so diversity remains at the heart of our recruitment strategy. Our employee benefits and perks are also regularly reviewed to ensure they fit our team’s needs and can help attract new talent to broaden our team. For more about the importance of diversity in a professional setting, take a look at our article on the value of diversity in the workplace. Continuing professional development Even after we leave education, we continue to learn and grow over the course of our lives. As an employer, you could look for a new hire who already has every skill you might possibly need, but that may be a difficult search. Instead, it can pay off to find a person who’s dedicated and open to learning, and to help them develop new skills. We want to help our employees develop themselves, and we’re prepared to fund training that would help them in their roles. If someone thinks they could benefit from training in a particular area, we’ll listen to and consider their request. For example, we’ve sponsored project management, HR management, cybersecurity and language courses for individual employees, with positive results both for the employees and for Darwin as a company. We’re a small startup, but we want to grow rapidly and we’re always looking at what we can offer our staff, from courses and conferences to expensed refreshments at the office. Our employees are humans, and we want them to find fulfilment both at work and outside it. If any of this appeals to you, we’re hiring! Take a look at our careers page to see which vacancies are currently open. We also welcome speculative applications. Darwin Innovation Group is a UK-based company that provides services related to autonomous vehicles and communications. If you’re interested in working with us, take a look at our careers page. If you’d like to know how we can help your organisation make use of autonomous vehicles, contact us. You can also follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

A diverse workforce is a valuable asset to any employer that wants to create resourceful, versatile and creative teams. In this post, we’re going to explain why diversity is important for innovation, and look at some ways to encourage diverse recruitment. Enhancing innovation with diverse teams When we talk about diversity in organisations, we’re talking about organisations employing people with a wide range of identities and experiences. An organisation that solely employed men would lack gender diversity, for example, but so would an organisation that solely employed women. It’s variety that enables innovation to thrive. If your organisation includes people from various backgrounds, with various identities, trained in various areas, they’ll have different knowledge and different strengths. When one employee lacks the knowledge for a particular situation, another will be able to compensate for it. This is why organisations form teams to work on projects. A group of people working together, pooling their different knowledge and skills, can see and achieve things that no one member of the team could manage alone. The creation of teams is, in itself, a recognition of the importance of diversity. However, if all your employees have had similar experiences, they may all look at a problem from the same angle, diluting the benefits of having a team. In a diverse organisation, your employees will be able to look at it from different angles and may see different things. An example: designing a public bathroom For a simple illustration, imagine a team designing a set of unisex bathroom stalls for a shopping centre. There are crucial elements that some people would think of immediately and some might overlook. For example, if nobody on the team has ever menstruated, there’s a chance the stalls might be designed without a bin: something that would be essential for many users. It’s also essential to have step-free toilets, outfitted for accessibility, for the benefit of wheelchair users or other people who might benefit from a grab rail. A team with varied knowledge and experiences is more likely to think of every requirement than a team that lacks that diversity. To use an analogy, if your employees all have the same knowledge and experiences, it’s a bit like gathering your entire football team into one small section of the pitch. If everyone’s around your goal, it’s going to be great for defence, but it’s going to be difficult to pass the ball down the pitch or to score. To do well, you need your players to be spread out. Respecting privacy Of course, it’s also important for employers to recognise that their employees have a right to privacy. There’s a balance that needs to be found, so we can encourage a diverse workforce without making people reveal information they’d prefer to keep to themselves. At Darwin, we send new members of our team a diversity questionnaire, which helps us identify problems such as, for example, whether there’s a gender pay gap, whether people are paid differently based on age and whether groups are underrepresented in our workforce. However, this questionnaire is optional, and employees are free to leave it blank or opt out of any of the individual questions. This lets Darwin gather a broad view of the company without putting individual employees in a difficult position. Incomplete data is still valuable, and it’s important not to lose sight of the individuals we’re working with, who may be uncomfortable exposing certain information about themselves, in our pursuit of the benefits that diversity brings. How to encourage diversity in recruitment You can harness the benefits of diversity by making your company attractive and accessible to a broad range of potential employees. One way you can do this is simply by being open about your company’s positive attitude to diversity, and by making sure your existing employees understand your values. If prospective employees feel that the culture in your company is a welcoming one, they’ll be more likely to apply. You can also widen your recruitment pool by offering remote working and flexible hours, as some companies may have discovered since early 2020. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Darwin allowed home working, which meant we could employ a larger range of people than organisations that required people to come in to the office every day. For example, it might be difficult or impossible for single parents, carers, people with certain disabilities or people living outside the UK to reach the Darwin offices, but remote working means we can still harness their expertise. Now that the pandemic has tested the remote working capabilities of many organisations, perhaps we’ll see more varied employment opportunities for people who can’t necessarily come in to the office, and more organisations benefitting from their knowledge and experience. When you remove these physical barriers, all that matters is that a person is good at what they do. Darwin Innovation Group is a UK-based company that provides services related to autonomous vehicles and communications. If you’re interested in working with us, take a look at our careers page. If you’d like to know how we can help your organisation make use of autonomous vehicles, contact us. You can also follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Darwin Innovation Group is testing its ubiquitous communications technology in Cornwall. The technology switches instantly between 5G and satellite broadband if one network becomes unavailable, allowing devices to stay connected continuously on the move. Darwin plans to make this technology publicly available in the form of a device that can be installed in vehicles on the factory line. The project is supported by Virgin Media O2, HISPASAT, AWS, AVIVA, UKSA and ESA. Darwin Innovation Group’s ubiquitous communications technology makes it possible to switch seamlessly between 5G and satellite networks as required. In collaboration with Virgin Media O2, HISPASAT, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Aviva, the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), Darwin is demonstrating this technology in a trial in Cornwall. Reliable, high-capacity broadband on the move has many uses. For example: Autonomous vehicles need to be able to process, interpret and potentially store large quantities of information from their sensors, and from other autonomous vehicles nearby, in real time. Mobile health clinics could offer on-the-spot treatment to patients who need immediate care or live in isolated areas. With a reliable internet connection, patients and paramedics can consult remotely with medical experts over video calls. On-demand shuttle services could offer public transport in rural areas where regular bus services are economically impractical. The shuttle could receive real-time requests from passengers going to a particular destination and alter its route to pick people up. Mining or agricultural machinery could be operated remotely. Delivery drivers could update online records of what has been delivered and to whom in real time, even when making deliveries in areas without terrestrial coverage. Passengers may need reliable connectivity to keep themselves entertained during a journey, particularly if they’re streaming television, playing online games or making video calls. 5G networks have an enormous capacity for transmitting information and can handle many users simultaneously. Whilst 4G provides the best coverage delivered to date, and population coverage is now very strong, some areas can struggle to get strong signal, so 5G is being rolled out to those areas that need additional capacity most. Satellites can support connectivity in areas where mobile networks are not available, as satellite broadband can be used anywhere with a clear line of sight to the sky. This means it tends to offer a good connection and ensure high network availability in the countryside, villages, parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty: places where the terrestrial network rollout is likely to take some time to reach, or where restrictions exist on the construction of new masts. Darwin’s ubiquitous communications technology makes it possible to integrate mobile and satellite connectivity seamlessly, without any loss of data or connectivity when switching between networks. This lets people benefit from both 5G’s high capacity and satellite broadband’s wide reach when travelling; if one network becomes unavailable, another can take its place instantly. The Cornwall trial will demonstrate how information can be transmitted from or received by a van equipped with this technology. The goal of this trial is to transmit real-time data to the cloud for storage and processing, including speed, temperature and air quality information, and to be able to make uninterrupted video or voice calls from inside the van. Darwin is using the AWS cloud to store and process the data. Virgin Media O2 and HISPASAT are providing the mobile and satellite connectivity. Aviva is providing insurance for the vehicle undertaking these tests as part of its five-year strategic partnership with Darwin. Cornwall was chosen for the trial because it provides a challenge. It has some gaps in mobile coverage, and it also has a landscape that presents challenges for satellite coverage, as hills or vegetation may at times mean that there’s no clear line of sight to a satellite. This means the van will need to switch between both technologies as needed. If neither terrestrial nor satellite networks are available, the telematics and air quality data the van produces will be stored on board and transmitted as soon as it’s able to connect again. Darwin hopes to make its ubiquitous communications solution available to the public in the form of a user-friendly device, which can be installed on the factory line and used without the need for specific technical knowledge. This will be produced with the help of ESA, Virgin Media O2 and HISPASAT after the results of this trial have been analysed. Rodrigo Barreto, Enterprise Architect at Darwin, said: ‘This is such a great moment for the project! After months of researching, developing, building and testing the minimum viable product, we are showing what Darwin’s mobility solution is capable of, with the beautiful scenery of Cornwall as the background. This moment builds on the successful implementation of the Virgin Media O2–Darwin SatCom Lab and wouldn’t be possible without the significant input from partners, such as Virgin Media O2 and HISPASAT, and from suppliers. A great amount of knowledge has been accumulated getting to where we are now, and this sets us on a great course for our upcoming trials with a driverless shuttle at Harwell Campus and for our next steps in our collaboration with the European Space Agency.’ Sergio Budkin, Director of Market Development at Virgin Media O2, said: ‘We are very excited to trial these technologies in a very challenging environment. We have been supporting Darwin R&D with the European Space Agency to bring this technology to market and we are very confident that it will provide UK companies with a technological advantage to reshape the way in which they create value.’ Elodie Viau, Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications at the European Space Agency, said: ‘The Darwin project will enable logistics to become fully digital while reducing carbon emissions. We need to get data all the time, everywhere – and, to achieve that, space must be seamlessly integrated into terrestrial 5G solutions. I am excited to see Darwin in action, proving that investment in space benefits not only the logistics industry, but also people ranging from shoppers seeking to buy a wide selection of goods at reasonable prices to patients benefiting from remote diagnosis.’ Inés Sanz, Head of Customer Engineering at HISPASAT, said: ‘We are delighted to participate in the Darwin project. For HISPASAT it is an excellent opportunity to show that satellite technology allows perfect connectivity in mobility environments, being a key element for autonomous vehicles where terrestrial coverage doesn’t exist or doesn’t have sufficient capacity. We are convinced that the satellite will play a crucial role in the extension of 5G networks.’ Darwin Innovation Group is a UK-based company that provides services related to autonomous vehicles and communications. If you’re interested in working with us, take a look at our careers page. If you’d like to know how we can help your organisation make use of autonomous vehicles, contact us. You can also follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

At Darwin, we have a team of developers creating software for use with connected and autonomous vehicles. Some of our creations are also of interest to companies that use traditional vehicles. For example, we’ve been working on efficiency-boosting fleet management software, which could save fuel and reduce emissions for companies that make frequent deliveries. In order to create our software, we’ve been working with Amazon Web Services, or AWS. The coding we do and the software we make is stored on the AWS Cloud. In this post, we’re going to talk about what it’s like to work closely with AWS and its team, drawing on the experiences of Darwin’s CEO Milos Petrovic. Autonomous vehicles generate huge quantities of data, which need to be transmitted in real time and stored in order to be useful. In the past, to store information on this level, a company would need its own data centres. By offering almost limitless cloud storage on a pay-as-you-go basis, AWS opens new doors for small and medium enterprises without the need for them to buy, own and maintain their own data centres and servers. In November 2020, we experimented with driving autonomous vehicles at the Darwin SatCom Lab and sending the telemetry data to AWS. We had good results, but we wanted to ask AWS for advice on how to use the service more effectively. We approached AWS directly to find out if they’d like to collaborate. They thought our work was interesting and said they’d be happy to work with us. This meant that Darwin would continue to use AWS’s services for coding, and AWS would provide Darwin with business and technical support. Darwin would also have greater access to AWS’s cutting-edge technology, including some technology that was still in beta and not yet available to the public. We worked together with the AWS IoT prototyping team for over six weeks of intensive co-development. These AWS prototyping architects were dedicated to our project; they became part of the team, and we would have video calls open for hours at a time as we coded, working together remotely. At the end of those weeks, we had a code base and a huge amount of new knowledge. Everyone involved in this collaboration was able to learn and benefit from it. Darwin gained a more intimate knowledge of AWS and of how to get the best use out of it, which will help us build other features in the future. By working directly with their customers, meanwhile, AWS can get a clearer idea of what works, where there’s room for improvement and how their services are being used. We still have regular meetings with AWS to discuss new opportunities, and we’re looking forward to working together on more projects. Amongst other things, we’ve been using AWS to develop software that allows companies to track the levels of carbon dioxide produced by their vehicles. This involves gathering emissions data in real time from vehicles, storing it on the AWS Cloud and analysing it. With this information, we can learn how much CO2 a fleet of vehicles is producing, we can inform managers of how they’re performing in relation to their green targets, and we can make suggestions for how to improve. For any company that uses many vehicles, such as supermarkets and delivery services, even small improvements to efficiency can make a substantial difference to fuel use and carbon emissions. Darwin and AWS are working together to make those improvements possible. Darwin Innovation Group is a UK-based company that provides services related to autonomous vehicles and communications. If you’re interested in working with us, take a look at our careers page. If you’d like to know how we can help your organisation make use of autonomous vehicles, contact us. You can also follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

With the advent of any large change in technology, it’s important to consider the potential environmental impact. What are the environmental costs? What are the benefits? Is this change a positive one for the world we live in? Self-driving cars, or CAVs, are approaching our roads. We’re going to take a look at the environmental impact of self-driving cars, and at some of the benefits. Powered by electricity Most CAVs are expected to be powered by electricity, rather than fossil fuels. After all, the autonomous systems will need electricity to work, so it makes sense to power the entire car using the same method. Electric cars do still have an impact on the environment, of course. The electricity used to power them isn’t always produced by clean means. However, Transport & Environment reports that electric cars produce much lower carbon emissions than cars powered by fossil fuels: ‘petrol and diesel cars emit almost 3 times more CO2 than the average EU electric car’. This conclusion takes the production of electricity and batteries into account. In 2020, the UK generated more electricity through renewable sources than from burning fossil fuels, and the trend towards renewables is likely to continue. This means that existing electric vehicles are likely to keep getting cleaner and more sustainable as time goes by, whereas a vehicle that was created to run on fossil fuels will always rely on fossil fuels. Electric motors are also more efficient than fuel-burning combustion engines. And efficiency is important, as we’re about to discuss. Energy-saving efficiency As mentioned above, electric motors are efficient. Internal combustion engines waste most of the energy from the fuel as noise and heat; this is why petrol-powered cars are so loud. Electric cars are naturally much quieter because most of the electricity is converted into movement rather than noise, although, for the safety of pedestrians, electric vehicles can be designed to make noise under certain circumstances. Self-driving cars can also move more efficiently than cars operated by a human. A study by Zhu et al. found that vehicles in adaptive cruise control mode, which partly automates driving, consumed about 5 to 7% less fuel than vehicles driven without adaptive cruise control. With higher levels of automation, we might expect to see lower levels of fuel consumption, and therefore greener journeys. The US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory found in a 2017 study that ‘aggressive driving’, such as speeding and sudden braking, can increase fuel consumption dramatically. Aggressive driving is generally a result of human frustration, so it’s unlikely to be a large problem for autonomous vehicles, although of course autonomous vehicles can still brake suddenly in emergencies. When multiple autonomous vehicles travel together, the need to accelerate or brake suddenly is reduced even further. As we mentioned in our article on 5G applications, a convoy of autonomous vehicles could communicate with each other in order to accelerate and brake simultaneously, with the front vehicle setting the pace. In this case, each vehicle knows exactly what the one in front is doing, meaning that there’s no need to brake suddenly in response to the vehicle in front unexpectedly slowing down. Acceleration and braking can be a smoother process, and therefore a more fuel-efficient one. The problems that remain Electric autonomous vehicles don’t solve every environmental problem caused by cars. For example, tyres send rubber particles into the air as they wear down on roads, contributing to air pollution. This problem would remain even if all cars on the road became electric. In fact, the Times reports that electric vehicles with large, heavy batteries can release more particles from tyre and road wear than petrol or diesel cars. Replacing traditional petrol-powered cars with electric cars would make a positive difference to CO2 pollution, but it’s also important to carry out research into the issues that electric vehicles don’t solve. In late 2020, Autocar reported on research by Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory into creating lighter batteries for electric vehicles. The Tyre Collective, meanwhile, is working on a device that captures airborne particles from tyres as they wear down. The road to more sustainable transport is a winding one. There are many problems to be solved and many aspects to be considered; for example, it’s important not to focus solely on road vehicles and neglect investment in trains. But, if we see some of today’s human-driven, petrol-powered vehicles replaced with self-driving electric cars, it’s likely to have a positive impact overall. Darwin Innovation Group is a UK-based company that provides services related to autonomous vehicles and communications. If you’re interested in working with us, take a look at our careers page. If you’d like to know how we can help your organisation make use of autonomous vehicles, contact us. You can also follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.