Mobility and Autonomous Systems AI Working Group

The Mobility and Autonomous Systems Working Group brings together organisations shaping autonomous vehicles, logistics, robotics, manufacturing and connected infrastructure. It addresses barriers to scaling autonomy, from safety and standards to interoperability, supply chains and skills. Through roundtables, workshops and fireside discussions, it creates guidance documents, practical use cases and industry briefings that turn deployment experience into clear frameworks for responsible scale.

Why This Group Exists

Autonomous vehicles, robotics and connected systems have the potential to transform safety, productivity, infrastructure resilience and supply chain performance. They can improve accessibility, reduce operational risk and enable more efficient urban and industrial environments. Realising that impact requires alignment across mobility, logistics, infrastructure, manufacturing, planning and regulatory stakeholders.

Yet scaling AI enabled autonomy remains complex. Organisations face regulatory uncertainty, evolving assurance expectations, fragmented standards, data governance challenges, supply chain immaturity and widening skills gaps. Investment decisions are often slowed by unclear compliance pathways and the absence of shared deployment frameworks.

This group exists to address those constraints directly. It brings together organisations deploying AI in real world autonomous systems to identify common blockers, align on practical approaches and produce guidance that reduces risk, strengthens confidence and supports responsible commercial scale across the UK.

Who’s Involved

Participants include autonomy and robotics engineers, AI and perception leads, heads of vehicle or systems engineering, transport and infrastructure operators, advanced manufacturing leaders, supply chain technology teams and investors backing deployment. The focus is on those responsible for designing, testing, deploying and scaling autonomous systems in live environments, where safety, reliability and commercial viability must hold.

Participation is selective to ensure informed discussion, shared credibility and practical collaboration between peers. The group operates as a trusted forum for leaders shaping how mobility and wider autonomous systems scale commercially and responsibly across the UK.

Phill Davies

Phill Davies

Chair, Mobility and Autonomous Systems Working Group

What the Group Delivers

Working alongside UKAI members, the group turns hard won deployment experience into outputs that remove friction from scaling AI powered autonomous systems. The focus is on the points where programmes stall in practice. Assurance, evidence, integration and operational control.

The group produces a stream of decision ready material, including:

  • Guidance on testing and assuring AI-driven perception, decision making and control systems, including failure modes and edge case behaviour.

  • Practical frameworks for moving from pilots and trials into operational deployment, covering readiness gates and acceptance criteria.

  • Templates and reference approaches for safety cases, evidencing performance, and aligning to relevant standards and assurance expectations.

  • Operational playbooks for monitoring, drift detection, incident response, human oversight and lifecycle governance.

  • Use cases and case studies that show how autonomy integrates across vehicles, logistics, robotics, manufacturing and connected infrastructure.

  • Briefings that translate member experience into clear positions on interoperability, data governance, infrastructure dependencies and commercial deployment models.

These outputs are designed to influence how autonomous systems are specified, assured and adopted across critical environments. They provide reference points that shape deployment decisions, de-risk investment and establish clearer expectations around AI behaviour, safety and operational accountability.

The objective is not commentary. It is to create artefacts that materially improve how AI powered autonomy moves from controlled testing into dependable, system level operation.

How the Group Works

The group operates as a senior, practitioner led forum focused on real deployment experience. Discussion is grounded in live programmes, engineering trade-offs and operational constraints rather than abstract policy or early stage experimentation.

Sessions are structured around defined problem statements drawn from member environments. Participants share approaches, surface friction points and test assumptions with peers operating at comparable scale and complexity. The emphasis is on disciplined exchange and applied learning.

The group maintains a steady cadence without unnecessary overhead. Between meetings, activity is focused on progressing agreed strands of work, capturing technical insight and ensuring continuity across related discussions within the wider UKAI network.

Engagement is selective and built on trust, enabling candid conversation around performance, assurance, integration challenges and commercial reality as AI powered autonomy moves into critical systems.

Roundtables
Closed discussions for senior leaders shaping the future of mobility and autonomous systems in live, commercially active environments.

Technical Sessions
Focused exchanges on the practical challenges of deploying and scaling autonomous systems powered by AI.

Applied Outputs
Collective insight translated into guidance, use cases and reference material that supports real world delivery.

Industry Briefings
Clear, senior level perspectives drawn from member experience that inform market direction, standards discussions and commercial adoption pathways.

Ecosystem Integration
Collaboration with related UKAI activity where priorities intersect across infrastructure, innovation and regulation.

 

What’s Coming Up

The initial phase of work will focus on identifying the practical constraints slowing deployment across mobility and autonomous systems, then prioritising the areas where collective action can unlock scale. The emphasis is on surfacing shared friction points and turning them into focused strands of activity.

Early areas of attention include assurance and validation of AI driven systems, alignment to evolving standards, integration across complex infrastructure environments, and the commercial and operational requirements for moving beyond pilot programmes. The group will also examine lifecycle performance, monitoring and oversight, supply chain dependencies and workforce capability, recognising that scale depends as much on operational readiness as technical performance.

This forward programme is designed to concentrate effort where it has the greatest impact on responsible, dependable deployment.

How to Get Involved

If you are directly involved in the development, deployment or scaling of autonomous systems and want to contribute to shaping how the sector moves forward, we welcome a conversation.

Participation is focused on those with active delivery accountability and a willingness to contribute experience into a trusted, practitioner led forum.

Members contribute to core quarterly meetings, themed sessions, and outputs throughout the year. Additional working sessions or deep-dives take place as needed based on member priorities.

If these challenges resonate and you want to be part of a peer group working through them in practice, please get in touch with Stephen Moore.