Living Lab as an Ecosystem for Development, Demonstration and Assessment of Autonomous Mobility Solutions

• Main Authors: Andreja Pucihar, Iztok Zajc, Radovan Sernec, Gregor Lenart
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-07-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: autonomous vehicles; living lab; innovation; use case; small country
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4095

Autonomous vehicles (AV) have the potential to disrupt the entire transport industry. AV may bring many opportunities as for example reduction of road accidents, less congestion on the roads, and a lower number of vehicles that are better utilized. Full AV also brings new social element as they enable mobility for all. In addition, the use of digital technologies in combination with AV introduces new business models in transportation, where the lines between car ownership, rental, and lease modes are more and more blurred. To explore the potential of AV in a smart city context, the AV Living Lab was created on the premises of BTC City in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2017. The AV Living lab was created to test and to learn about real-life solutions for implementation of AV. The underlying concept is BTC City as a Living lab innovation ecosystem, where the latest advanced technologies, business models, and services are tested with real users, real cars, on real roads over the real interactions in a cross-industry environment. In this paper, we describe the AV Living Lab concept and provide details of a specific use case—a large-scale pilot demonstration of AV and future mobility solutions. During the event, users participated in a survey and expressed their attitudes towards autonomous mobility. The results offer the first insights into the readiness of citizens for AV implementation and directs future actions needed for faster adoption of AV and future mobility solutions.