The driverless electric delivery vehicles will also survey the road surface as they go feeding data into a central system to map the conditions of highways.

Surrey-based Academy of Robotics has developed Kar-go, which is Europe’s first road-based autonomous delivery vehicle.

Originally developed to dramatically reduce both the financial and environmental costs of last-mile parcel delivery, Eurovia UK recognised its potential for use in infrastructure and urban development work.

Kar-go’s operating system is able to understand the difference between features such as cracks, puddles, potholes and shadows.

Eurovia UK will in turn help Academy of Robotics to scale its training of autonomous vehicles by giving it access to digital camera data gathered by Eurovia’s fleet, which covers over 50,000 kms of roads.

Scott Wardrop, Chief Executive of Eurovia UK said: “We have reviewed a number of autonomous vehicle solutions, but a critical component for us in developing this partnership was the technology’s ability to manage the complexity of recognising different road surfaces and their absolute commitment to sustainable innovation.”

William Sachiti, CEO and Co-Founder of Academy of Robotics said: “To date, most autonomous vehicle training and testing has taken place on well-marked roads or specially designated test centres, but these areas rarely reflect real-world conditions.

“This partnership and the access to the vast dataset of different road conditions it provides, together with the increased investment we have coming from our latest funding round will ensure we can test and train our technology on UK roads at an unparalleled scale and pace,” added Sachiti.