In his role as Head of Verification & Validation for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) at WMG, Siddartha and his team are developing pioneering testing methodologies (using simulation & real-world testing), & international standards to enable robust & safe use of CAV technology, & building research collaborations within the UK & internationally.

His diverse research portfolio mainly includes test scenario identification (especially unknown unknowns and near-miss scenarios), safety of CAVs (including AI safety), use of simulation and real-world testing for safety evidence generation. All this with an aim to make selfdriving cars commercially viable, consequently accelerating their introduction and realising the utopian selfdriving car dream.

One of the key features of Siddartha’s research over the past year has been his novel proposal to create test scenarios to identify and test the corner cases or the “unknown unknowns”. His approach has been applied by industry in various UK Government funded Collaborative Research & Development projects on Connected & Autonomous Vehicles. His proposed method has received interest not only from the UK but also internationally, and is also influencing international (ISO) standards.

For his research contributions, he was recognised in the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2018 list and was selected for the STEM for Britain 2017 event, for being among UK’s top 30 young researchers in engineering to present at the UK Parliament. He has received numerous other awards.

Along with his focus on testing of CAVs, he has also focussed his research on trust in driverless cars and conducted many user-trial studies using the WMG’s 3xD Simulator for Intelligent Vehicles. Results for the studies have provided a unique insight for WMG’s industrial partners in their design of HMI for driverless cars. His unique insight into user acceptance of driverless cars has led him to be adjudged among the Top 3 Innovators by Goodyear in their pan-European ThinkGoodMobility competition.