Aurrigo wins up to £100,000 grant to pilot driverless shuttle at Portsmouth port
What's the deal? Aurrigo InternationalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (AIM: AURR), a Coventry-based maker of autonomous vehicles, has been selected for the next phase of the UK Freight Innovation Fund and will receive up to £100,000 to trial its Auto-Shuttle at Portsmouth International Port. Deployment is expected to begin within a month.
What's the endgame? The pilot will run an electric Auto-Shuttle along a 1km portside route, carrying passengers, baggage, and freight in live mixed traffic. It marks Aurrigo's first move into the ports sector, extending technology already used at airports across six countries.
Why now? The grant follows an initial £10,000 Accelerator award that funded a feasibility study. The money is contingent on successful deployment, moving the project from proposal into a real-world test.
What could go wrong? A working seaport mixes vehicles of varied sizes, pedestrians, and traffic that shifts with ferry and cruise schedules. Chief operations officer Richard Fairchild said autonomous vehicles are "already transforming how airports operate in six countries," but Aurrigo must still prove its technology runs safely in an environment that carries fresh operational and regulatory complexity.
The bigger picture: The grant sits within the Department for Transport's Freight Innovation Fund, which is pushing selected technologies from proposals into live-logistics trials alongside partners such as the Port of TyneDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Shoreham Port. For Aurrigo, the award adds to a busy year that included a £1.43m government CAM Pathfinder grant for airport safety work and a £6.28m contract with Ultra Global.
The signal: The sum is modest — a pilot grant, not a scaled contract — ranking in roughly the 31st percentile for amount. But it is useful validation that Aurrigo's autonomy software can travel beyond the airside market into ports and freight.
Read more: kalkinemedia.com
Image credit: Tim Sheerman-Chase
