NEWS

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an important partner in Darwin’s transportation and communications work. On 27 November 2023, ESA held a Transportation Commercialisation Day at the European Space Research and Technology Centre, located in the scenic seaside town of Noordwijk in the Netherlands. The Transportation Day was the second in ESA’s Commercialisation Days series, arranged by the ESA Commercialisation Gateway. Through these events, ESA is supporting the commercialisation of R&D projects and encouraging full use of the potential of space in everyday life. The event focused on three main areas of innovation in transport: autonomous vehicles, railways and maritime transportation. It offered startups the opportunity to pitch their transportation innovations to an audience of investors, including the European Investment Bank. Darwin was there to present its work with connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). ‘It was an excellent conference,’ said Daniela Petrovic, Darwin’s co-founder. ‘We were able to hear valuable feedback on the commercialisation paths of our products and services from bankers and investors in person.’ Daniela also enjoyed the opportunity to see zero-gravity training and enter an exact replica of the International Space Station’s Columbus laboratory. ‘I had a go, and it wasn’t easy to do the example experiment even with the luxury of full gravity. We should appreciate the efforts of astronauts who are advancing science to new frontiers for humanity.’ Below are some photographs from the event, including a picture of Daniela next to a Mars rover with Roberta Mugellesi Dow, integrated applications manager at ESA. We are grateful to Roberta for all her help in promoting Darwin within the ESA community and through ESA platforms. 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.

On 20 November 2023, the 3rd Arab British Economic Summit was held in London. This annual event, organised by the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, is designed to encourage connections and collaboration between the UK and the Arab world. The year’s theme, ‘Sustaining an Emerging Vision’, focused on sustainability and strengthening ties. Darwin’s delivery director Daniela Petrovic and VP of sales Adnan Salkic attended the summit, where they presented Darwin’s work on sustainable transportation, including the use of fully electric autonomous vehicles. Daniela and Adnan also spoke about Darwin’s use of AI to make improvements in fields such as healthcare, transport and logistics. ‘We made significant contacts, invited guests to see our services in Harwell and enjoyed Middle Eastern specialities, such as coffee from Jordan and date cakes from Qatar,’ Daniela said. She and Adnan are looking forward to further discussions with the connections they made at the summit. 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.

On 20 and 21 September 2023, Darwin attended Greencities Málaga as an exhibitor. The Greencities conference, now in its fourteenth edition, is an annual opportunity for organisations from across the world to explore how urban areas can be made greener and more sustainable. Darwin was located at stand P14, next to Telefónica Tech, our established partner in the creation of a sustainable future for urban transportation links. Darwin’s Málaga-based Spanish team was delighted to meet many industry partners and to explore opportunities for collaboration with organisations such as: Gaia-X, a project developing a secure and transparent ecosystem for storage, sharing and use of data. Darwin used this opportunity to announce its membership and to start collaboration on data sharing. Telefónica Tech. In addition to our existing work together on autonomous vehicle cybersecurity, we discussed approaches to port infrastructure making use of autonomous vehicles and secure usage of utilities in port environments. Málaga City Hall. We welcomed Trinidad Hernández of the city hall’s Mobility Delegation to our stand and spoke about the implementation of autonomous vehicles in Málaga, following on from our discussion with the mayor of Málaga on the subject. The University of Málaga. We progressed discussions with the university on joint projects in the space sector. Darwin’s co-founder, Daniela Petrovic, was pleased to be present at the event. ‘The two-day event enabled us to meet over 500 people, create new contacts, and initiate four new projects which we are looking forward to progressing,’ she said. ‘I want to use this opportunity to thank both the UK and Spanish teams for enormous efforts in preparation, promotions and collaboration in order to make this event a great success.’ 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.

Smart cities and sustainable mobility are exciting topics at the moment. By integrating communications technology with urban spaces, we can open up ways to make daily life more convenient and efficient for city-dwellers across the world. From 16 to 20 October 2023, Darwin attended the Future Urbanism Expo in Dubai. This event took place alongside the major annual tech show GITEX Global at the Dubai World Trade Centre. We were located at stand 112 in hall 28, where we spoke about Darwin's work with ubiquitous communications, vehicle data collection and analysis, AI modelling and autonomous vehicles. The Future Urbanism event was a valuable opportunity to make connections. Among others, the Darwin team met with autonomous vehicle manufacturers, Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources and the Saudi smart city project NEOM, presenting Darwin’s unique communications technology, which combines terrestrial and satellite networks to stay connected on the move. Darwin also had the opportunity to speak with Auve Tech, an autonomous vehicle developer we’ve previously collaborated with. At the expo, we discussed Auve’s next-generation autonomous shuttle MiCa and the value of Darwin’s techno-economic modelling for MiCa use cases. We’re constantly working with autonomous vehicle developers such as Auve to provide our autonomous vehicle services. Here are a few more of the connections Darwin made at the event: We presented Darwin’s unique solutions to the Department of Municipalities and Transport of Abu Dhabi, demonstrating how our work enhances the potential of, for example, autonomous vehicles used for site inspection. We presented Darwin’s continuous connectivity solution to the Saudi Mining Services Company (ESNAD). By providing a constant, reliable connection, Darwin can support endeavours such as mine inspection and connected fleet management. We spoke with Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII) about opportunities to partner on research and development related to 5G, autonomous vehicle platforms, AI, space and business models. Darwin’s unique R&D labs are designed to link cutting-edge technologies with business model innovations. We spoke with Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre about collaboration and knowledge transference. The space sector has always been an important part of Darwin’s work; our technology uses satellite networks to maintain a constant connection when terrestrial networks fall out of range, and we have longstanding partnerships with the European Space Agency and UK Space Agency. GITEX and Future Urbanism are important events for the encouragement of collaboration and innovation, and Darwin was delighted to play a role. We’re looking forward to achieving new things by working together with other innovative organisations. 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’s co-founder and CEO, Milos Petrovic, was honoured to be welcomed to Serbia’s White Palace in August. At the palace, he had the pleasure of speaking to Crown Prince Alexander and Crown Princess Katherine of Serbia about Darwin’s work. Prince Alexander and Princess Katherine had the opportunity to remotely command the Darwin Autonomous Shuttle from the palace, across a distance of over a thousand miles. The prince and princess also received a copy of Darwin the Shuttle Runs Away, a children’s book about the shuttle’s adventures. During the visit, Milos and the royal family discussed Darwin’s ongoing support of the charity Lifeline. Lifeline was founded by Princess Katherine in 1993. In the three decades since the charity’s establishment, Lifeline has worked to support education, aid refugees and donate medical equipment to hospitals across Serbia. From September 2023 to March 2024, all Darwin profits from sales of our children’s book Darwin the Shuttle Runs Away will go to the Lifeline charity. The book, about the adventures of an anxious but strong-willed self-driving vehicle, is available on Amazon in both English and Spanish. 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.