UK-based artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicle firm FiveAI is planning to start the trial of its shared autonomous cars on London’s roads in 2019.

FiveAI co-founder Ben Peters said: “There are a lot of problems to solve there, but they are very well served by current providers, but in Zones 4 to 6 (the outer boroughs of London), about one-quarter of people are still driving their own vehicles to and from work.”

To begin the trial, the company will start a ‘data gathering’ stage, involving five FiveAI cars that will collect data about road conditions, the movement of pedestrians and other vehicles on the road, as well as the behaviour of road users such as drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

“The company is currently building a shared autonomous service for commuters in London’s outer boroughs of Bromley and Croydon.”

The data collection exercise will last for ten months and the data collected will be used to develop an artificial intelligence-based autonomous driving platform. Technology will have to be further developed before services can be operated without a driver present to engage the vehicle in case of accidents.

FiveAI said the data gathered will be used only for its autonomous car technology and stored in full compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The company is currently building a shared autonomous service for commuters in London’s outer boroughs of Bromley and Croydon.

Peters added: “We’re really targeting an urban service, which is the difficult part. Autonomous driving in urban areas is the hardest challenge, one that is still unsolved.”

So far, the company has raised $35m to develop autonomous car technology and a strategy to build a fleet of shared vehicles.