The United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) has announced a funding competition of up to £2 million for UK businesses to define a cyber-physical connected and autonomous vehicle test facility.
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will be partnering with the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Zenzic.
All three partners plan to invest up to £2 million in a maximum of five projects to support the development of a connected and autonomous vehicle cyber-security testing facility.
The UKRI said that all feasibility proposals must fulfil three requirements. The proposals must find ways to measure cyber-physical resilience and maintain cyber security for vehicles, roadside infrastructure, supporting services and so on. They must also provide input specifications for one or more new cyber test facilities, as well as explore opportunities to develop new cyber related services.
To be eligible for the grant the UKRI said the organisation must be a UK registered business, of any size, it must carry out its project work in the UK, claim grant funding and intend to exploit the results from or in the UK.
The competition is split into five themes. Submitted proposals must answer one of the following themes:
1. Monitoring
Determine and develop techniques to monitor the cyber health of CAVs and supporting infrastructure. Proposed techniques should determine when the vehicle (or infrastructure) is operating outside of normal parameters and recommend suitable responses. How monitoring may fit into cyber security management systems (CSMSs) should also be considered.
2. Threats to connected vehicle networks
Determine how to use physical and virtual testing to identify and mitigate against complex threats. Consider all interactions of vehicles, road-side communications equipment, smart infrastructure, mobile communications equipment and other possible factors which may present vulnerabilities or allow the growth of cyber threats.
3. Threats to automated vehicles
Investigate how individual automated vehicles (AVs) may be able to develop resilience and respond to cyber-attacks. The AV should be considered as a stand-alone system and as part of the wider connected vehicle network. Research should include directed attacks against vehicle systems, including perception sensors and manipulation through data connections and shared information protocols, such as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X).
4. Countermeasure and risk mitigation
Determine suitable scalable techniques that could be deployed as cyber threat countermeasures and what processes could be undertaken as risk mitigation. The solution should consider the connected vehicle and its supporting infrastructure.
5. Other
Other areas of cyber security which may improve the safety and security of vehicle occupants, service users, other road users (including vulnerable road users) and road safety at any scale.
The grant funding will offer up to £400,000 to applicants for their project costs.
Applications for the autonomous vehicle cybersecurity competition are available as of now and will be on 25 September 2019.
Find out more about the funding competition here.
