CAM Pathfinder: Enable

Overview

The Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) Pathfinder programme lays the foundations for an early commercial market. It positions the UK to secure first mover advantage in Europe for the deployment of CAM products and services.

The programme will support the UK CAM sector to accelerate its technological capabilities and demonstrate CAM operations as commercially viable. This programme will focus on high value market segments in the early commercialisation of these technologies, whilst also ensuring these are safe and secure for all.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to support the UK Government’s ambition to advance Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) services in high value areas into commercial offerings. This will be achieved by funding trials led by service operators or entities who benefit directly from the end use of CAM in live or analogous settings.

The design of the trial services should be dictated by a ‘market pull’ rather than a ‘technology push’. Suitably mature technologies should be used in order to answer commercial operational business case requirements, rather than developing technologies during the project.

Your proposal must outline a project for a live trial with real stakeholders, to demonstrate clear potential towards a commercial CAM service.

Your proposal must identify the type of service to be trialled, for example, passenger services, freight, last-mile delivery, and identify key aspects of the deployment domain.

Your proposal must also clearly identify all key roles and responsibilities including, but not limited to: the Authorised Self Driving Entity (ASDE), the No-User-in-Charge Operator (NUiCO) and the land owner or body responsible for the operating domain. Where relevant, connectivity providers, maintenance organisations and other key organisations should be identified.

Your project must

trial suitably mature CAM technologies in a plausible commercial service, develop operational models and support business case definitions for a future CAM deployment at scale
use CAM technologies to advance commercial readiness to deploy CAM services in specifically defined locations in the UK

be led by the service operator or entity who will benefit directly from the end use (the service) of the CAM technology deployment; they must quantify these benefits as part of the business case analysis during the project

be conducting substantial trial operations to a level of maturity that actionable business cases can be defined for the service, a derivative of the service or for similar deployments elsewhere

have the aim to lead to larger scale deployment opportunities which will drive measurable economic benefit to the project lead and the UK

Adaptation of CAM technologies are permitted to enable trials to be undertaken, such as route mapping, logistics on-site support and debugging.

Technology providers may build relationships with future operators to develop business cases, however core development of technologies is excluded from this competition.

If your project uses public roads or other public places it must follow the Department for Transport (DfT) Code of Practice: Automated Vehicle Trialling. If your project intendeds to pilot without a safety driver present, you must seek to comply with the associated requirements expected to be published during 2026.

Terminology in your application must comply with the meanings as per BSI Flex 1890 v6.0: 2025-03 Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM), Vocabulary.

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different geographies, service types, supply chain origins, vehicle types and deployment domains, for example, on and off public roads. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach.

If you are applying with different projects across the Enable and Demonstrate competitions Innovate UK will take into account your capacity to deliver more than one project.

Specific Themes

Your project must consider, analyse and report on each of the following aspects:

operational models, role definitions, legal and ethical liability areas across roles
routes towards compliance with current, near term and likely long term regulatory requirements for vehicle approval, authorisation and service licensing
detailed solutions to training of developers, operators and maintenance staff, and where appropriate, remote monitoring, operating staff
virtual and physical verification and assurance processes required to meet stakeholder requirements
in-service use monitoring
data; including collection, reduction, handling, processing, storage on and off-vehicle
safety cases, including content of versions for different stakeholders such as ASDE, NUiCO, insurance companies, local authorities, emergency services and the public
insurance engagement and insurance cost modelling
infrastructure requirements, including connectivity, remote monitoring and operations
scalability to a wider customer market and assessment of willingness to pay for services such as those trialled in the project
establishing supplier requirements for vehicle platforms based on the operator and users’ needs

Eligibility

Your project must:

have a grant funding request of between £2 million and £4 million
last between 18 and 24 months
start by 1 June 2026
end by 31 May 2028

Any funded organisation needs to carry out their project work in the UK and must intend to exploit the project results in the UK.

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.

If your project’s duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. Innovate UK will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Lead organisation

To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be one of the following:

a UK registered business of any size
a local authority
a transport authority

The lead organisation must be the service operator or entity which will directly benefit from the intended end use of the CAM service.

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

business of any size
academic institution
charity
not for profit
public sector organisation
research and technology organisation (RTO)

For public road applications, your project application must identify which partner will be acting as Authorised Self Driving Entity (ASDE) and which partner will be acting as No-User-in-Charge Operator (NUiCO) as per the definitions in BSI Flex 1890 v6.0: 2025-03 Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM), Vocabulary.

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

To be an eligible collaboration the lead and at least one other organisation must:

apply for funding when entering their costs into the application
include rationale for the collaboration and describe the structure in your application

Collaborators must be separate legal and non-linked entities. A collaboration between different organisations will only be valid if the following criteria applies between those organisations:

there is a no common shareholder with more than 25% ownership in each of the collaborating businesses
there is no common ‘person with significant control’ (as per Companies House definition) in each of the collaborating businesses
a ‘person with significant control’ in one collaborating business has a share of no more than 25% ownership of another collaborating business
a collaborating RTO has less than 50% ownership of a collaborating business

Non-funded partners

Your project can include organisations who do not claim any funding for their work on the project. Their costs will be covered from their own resources. These can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit the results outside the UK.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you cannot use subcontractors from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. Innovate UK will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

A business, local authority or transport authority can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator on one further application.

If a business, academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation is not leading any application it can collaborate on up to two applications.

Sanctions

This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.

Use of animals in research and innovation

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition if it complies with the requirements of this competition. If you have previously submitted an application that reached our assessment stage you can re-apply once more with the same proposal.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

are focussed solely on technology, component, system or vehicle development
are targeting a commercial service using Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) or Driver Control Assistance Systems (DCAS), or on levels of automation of level 3 or lower as defined by SAE J3016
are early stage research into automated driving systems
are using micro goods vehicles, indoor or pavement based robots or vehicles
include testing or deployments of drone technologies in public spaces
include aircraft or waterborne craft
include rail vehicles
are military in nature

Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:

dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

£15 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. This is subject to us receiving a sufficient number of high quality applications. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

Innovate UK reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions under exceptional circumstances, for example, in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations, or broader government funding decisions.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.

For industrial research projects, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 25% if you are a large organisation

For more information on company sizes refer to the company accounts guidance.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Innovate UK may revoke our decision to provide funding without notice if government commitment for this initiative is withdrawn.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs if the project lead is a business, or up to 50% if the project lead is a statutory body such as a local authority or transport authority. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity this maximum is shared between them. Of that percentage you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic

Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding

Research organisations using the Je-S system must submit their costs through the Je-S system which calculates the 80% FEC figure.
On IFS, only the 80% FEC output should be entered at 100% funding.
Applicants do not need to show the remaining 20% on the finance table.

To find out more see our: Cost Guidance for Academics.

Zenzic industrial contribution

A 3.5% industrial contribution is payable Zenzic by all partners on grant received.

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