A 拢13.4 million initiative to create a聽driverless transport testing area based in the Royal Borough of Greenwich and nearby Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in聽London is due to be up and running by spring 2019.
Loughborough聽University, the lead聽academic partner, has been awarded 拢500,000 as part of the project to develop a research programme enabling a real-world working test bed for connected and autonomous (driverless) vehicles.
The Smart Mobility Living Lab: London will enable companies to trial their ideas, technology and services within complex public environments, to help them develop new vehicle systems and big city transport applications.
Professor Pete Thomas of the Design School is leading Loughborough鈥檚 involvement. He said: 鈥淭his is an exciting venture to be a part of and will place Loughborough and Loughborough London at the heart of a world leading research and development facility for connected and autonomous vehicles.
鈥淭he award of the 拢13.4 million to the Living Lab consortium provides a fantastic opportunity for Loughborough to focus its research around this rapidly developing new socio-technical area.
鈥淚ntelligent Mobility will have a major impact on future transport and this test bed will enable the University in Loughborough and in London to be at the forefront of new developments.鈥�
The project partners, led by TRL, also include Transport for London, Costain, Cisco, Cubic, DG Cities and the London Legacy Development Corporation.
The test bed will include a wide range of facilities including connected and instrumented road infrastructure, mule vehicles for new automation systems, private networks and mobility data capture, 5G and DCRS connectivity and more specialist research equipment.
Loughborough鈥檚 contribution will include research and development into instrumented and connected roads, alongside other consortium Partner contributions including: a vehicle fleet for experimental purposes; cooperative intersection management systems; high accuracy GPS; 5G and large-scale vehicle to anything communication capability; high performance data capture and analysis system and other capabilities.
Prof Thomas said: 鈥淲e will be developing a new research programme that takes advantage of the facilities and the rapidly developing mobility environment.
鈥淐ompanies such as Ford will be increasing their presence at Here East (LUL) to take advantage of the teaching, research and innovation facilities.
鈥淲e will also be working with industry, both large and SME, to identify educational and CPD needs.
鈥淚n addition, there will be specific research equipment to meet existing LU needs while researchers will be able to access the much wider range of equipment in the Living Lab 鈥� including roadside, data, communications and vehicles.鈥�
The facilities will bring new research opportunities for many parts of the University from automation and robotics, to connectivity and communications, human factors and business areas.