The company, which employs 65 people at its headquarters in the West Midlands, will use the funding to proceed with local trials of its autonomous mobility technology and to further establish the company’s Asia-Pacific base at Adelaide’s Tonsley innovation precinct.
Roger van der Lee, RDM Group’s Adelaide-based autonomous programme director, said: “Our base within the Flinders University campus at Tonsley is our first international facility, and we’re very keen to start building a supply chain for our technology throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.
“RDM Group is already exploring trial opportunities with Flinders University and a range of other organisations interested in ‘first and last mile’ transport and logistics solutions. With global interest in autonomous freight and passenger transport systems growing rapidly, we want to make sure we are at the forefront of this cutting-edge new industry.”
The grant was awarded through the government’s $10 million Future Mobility Lab Fund. The firm moved to Adelaide following a successful showcase of the company’s ‘Pod Zero’ at last year’s 23rd World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems in Melbourne.
Dave Keene, chairman of RDM Group, said: “Establishing our base in Adelaide is hopefully a first step towards developing a bespoke assembly facility in South Australia that could potentially build hundreds of autonomous Pods every year and create tens of local jobs.
“This is a great example of innovation – developed in the UK – being exported all over the world and will hopefully put us on the international map for driverless vehicle technology.”
