Chipside Ltd, a leader in the world of parking and traffic management IT, delivers smart city initiatives by developing software to provide products and services for government traffic authorities in the UK.

The UK’s commitment to net zero by 2050 has led to a ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, requiring the very best UK technology to manage supply and demand due to restrictions on vehicle use.

The Innovate UK funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) will support Chipside Ltd in setting out a strategic systems roadmap to 2025, which brings local government parking, city access, and vehicle movement in line with the ten-point plan set out by local government.

The KTP will combine specially developed algorithms with the latest thinking in AI applications. This will enable Chipside Ltd to develop a suite of real-time AI decision services, designed to enable local authorities to better understand and control their regional transport networks.

Dr Özgür Şimşek, Deputy Head of Computer Science who leads the Artificial Intelligence Research Group at the University of Bath, will be the knowledge base lead for the KTP. Co-supervision of the partnership will be provided by Dr Fincham Haines, a Lecturer in Machine Learning also from the Department of Computer Science and member of CAMERA. Dr Şimşek says:

We look forward to collaborating with Chipside Ltd and applying our AI capabilities to support their strategic systems roadmap. They have a progressive development team that is keen to learn and include this knowledge into their processes.

This AI informed real-time behaviour data can be offered to both town and city managers and to the public simultaneously, to change immediate behaviour and guide commuters to different areas of the city. Dynamic pricing can also be introduced to incentivise time-flexible trips, lowering pricing after peak times to shift the time of travel and alleviate congestion and high pollution.

David Wright, Founder of Chipside Ltd and industrial supervisor for the KTP says:

The new knowledge gained from the partnership will be transformational for our company. It will form an intrinsic part of our software development strategy for the future, allowing us to expand our capabilities and more importantly reduce pollution and manage mobility supply and demand in real-time.

Izaro Lopez Garcia, Business Partnerships Manager in Research and Innovation Services (RIS) at the University of Bath who facilitated the new partnership says:

This project will be a UK first for local government sharing parking and movement data across borders in real-time. Chipside systems already contain data across those borders and AI can take it a step further in achieving UK government net zero objectives.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) are funded by Innovate UK to help businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills within the UK knowledge base.

Further information

Innovate UK KTN logo Chipside logo