U.K. Lab Offers On-Road, Digital Vehicle Testing

Automakers and autonomous technology providers are being offered a challenging cityscape location to prove their systems in both real and virtual world environments.

That’s the mission of the new Smart Mobility Living Lab located in the congested eastern side of London’s teeming metropolis. Launched last week, the lab boasts a host of on-road and digital testing and appraisal facilities for engineers to resolve issues and see how their driverless technology stands up to an almost infinite variety of scenarios.

The lab consists of three main sites including an off-road testing ground at east London’s Olympic Park, an on-road monitored network of inner city “smart” roads near its headquarters in southeast London’s Woolwich and a Human Factors Research Lab, based at Loughborough University in the Midlands, that is equipped to support research into human factors in automation.

The Woolwich site boasts leading-edge ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, a control room and data center. There are private offices and shared working space for customers, including video and audio-conferencing facilities and event space.

The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park offers an open, campus-like setting where automated driving systems can be refined before venturing out into the public highways leading into the heart of the city. Here SMLL also has offices at Plexal, Here East, a co-working space and innovation hub with an emphasis on the future of mobility.

At Loughborough University, the Human Factors Research Lab forms part of CAM TestbedUK, under the umbrella of SMLL, and is interoperable with the other test facilities.

It also is the base for the road network’s digital twin where automated systems can be put through their paces before on-road testing begins. The Cave Automatic Virtual Environment and driving simulator offers engineers the ability to conduct interactive driving experiments, either in a simulator vehicle or through the use of virtual reality.

At the SMLL launch, Paul Camoion, chairman and CEO of the Transport Research Laboratory, says: “We think we have here a facility that will allow three generic use cases. One is test driving vehicles and producing new services out in the real world. The second is simulation – doing the same in our digital twin in a virtual world.

“The last is innovation, bringing together the communities, companies and organizations not just in the transport space and not just vehicle or equipment providers but people in insurance or in the energy provision sector and many other sectors that are involved in, or affected by, transport outcomes. Our collaboration community is one of the distinctive things that we think we here, and in the U.K. generally, can offer.”