The Arrival Van has completed a live demonstration of its autonomous driving tech without a human driver onboard, marking a major milestone.

The demo of the Arrival Van’s autonomous driving functionalities was carried out at a fully functioning parcel depot and marks a major step forward in safety for self-driving technology in the commercial vehicle segment

The electric van, revealed earlier this year, is intended to revolutionise the commercial vehicle sector with its “outstanding total cost of ownership and robust design” and Arrival has also been developing autonomous driving functionality for the vehicle as part of the Robopilot project.

This project, part-funded by Innovate UK and the Centre for Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), is designed to improve the market knowledge, functionality, and public perception of autonomous driving systems.

The demo of the Arrival Van’s autonomous driving functionalities was carried out at a fully functioning parcel depot and marks a major step forward in safety for self-driving technology in the commercial vehicle segment. It’s the first time where an Arrival Van has manoeuvred around a facility without a human driver inside the vehicle and the vehicle was able to autonomously complete all operations performed on a daily basis by a commercial fleet driver.

The next step is to start testing the Arrival Van’s autonomous driving functionalities on the road in the UK ahead of deploying the technology in Arrival Vans across the globe. And the technology will also be adapted for the planned rollout of all Arrival vehicles, including the Arrival Bus and Arrival Car.

“At Arrival, we are building supplementary technologies that will help drivers. Depot manoeuvres are the most accident-prone parts of a worker’s shift and with our technology, we hope to introduce greater safety by removing human driving errors happening in confined environments,” said Max Kumskoy, head of advanced driver assistance and automated driving systems, Arrival.

“We are starting with a fixed controlled environment in the depot, where we are truly able to test and validate our technology. We can then understand how it will operate on public roads, in our vehicles, and how it can be implemented worldwide.”