Smart Mobility Living Lab: London

orange header.jpg — SMLL IS THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED URBAN TESTBED OF ITS KIND WITH THE SOLE PURPOSE OF ACCELERATING THE CREATION OF MOBILITY SOLUTIONS THAT ARE CLEAN, EFFICIENT, SAFE, RELIABLE AND CONVENIENT FOR EVERYONE. THE JOURNEY STARTS HERE.

using public and private roads in London, we are developing and validating new mobility and transport technologies in a real-world connected environment.

It’s going to help us build safer, cleaner, sustainable, accessible, more intelligent and better joined-up transport systems, turning the mobility products and services of the future from innovative ideas into commercial reality. The ServCity project to trial an autonomous taxi service, led by Nissan, is a perfect example of this ambition.

The Smart Mobility Living Lab in London is a TRL company. We share the same values as the world renowned research establishment, but we are here to meet the needs of new types of customers, the JourneyMakers who are shaping the future of transport by breaking with convention, leading with imagination, and inspiring a new generation to travel with softer footprints.

On a practical level, our services are based around the three integrated pillars of Test, Simulate and Innovate, with a full range of transport technical consultancy provided by TRL, DG Cities and the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC).

Bring components, cars, code, connected applications and complete service models to test and validate their performance in a real world situation.

Reduce your R&D overhead and accelerate your development timeline by testing first, and at scale, in our synthetic environment, which is a replica of the physical testbed.

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Join like-minded and adventurous organisations from varied sectors as we explore radical new approaches to transport and mobility, and investigate new ways of creating value.

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Everything you need to know about what goes on at the Smart Mobility Living Lab in 3 minutes. Check out the Content Hub for more videos showing what we do, and why.

SMLL is a testbed run by TRL. The concept was co-created by an industry-government joint initiative as part of a multi-million pound, on-going strategic investment in future transport options which will be more automated, and more carbon neutral.

TRL used to race cars around a test track and crash them to make them better by design. Today, we don’t need to do that; we can use computer models and simulations. The one thing we really can’t simulate though are the multitude of interactions between all the other people and vehicles who share the space. So the best way to test anything to do with transport, is to plug it directly into live traffic. Safety remains paramount, but by monitoring what happens “in the wild”, we learn more, and progress faster.

A ‘living lab’ is a research facility that is intrinsically part of its habitat. We’ve designed SMLL to be just that. Yes, it’s offices and garages and workshops. Yes it’s the public and private roads of London with all the extant traffic controls, constraints, and intersections with every other form of transport. And yes it’s all been wired up so that we can remotely monitor what’s happening and gather data in real time. More than all these things it’s a truly public affair. We might recruit participants for specific tasks within research activities…but we don’t recruit the other road users who share the space, providing the truly uncontrolled environment that is so prized at SMLL.

SMLL is based in London because, in a hierarchy of needs, the final step in product development means experimenting with real people going about their normal journeys. But doing so in a way that in no way endangers anyone else using the roads. The features of London make it a perfect microcosm for testing – if it works here, it will work anywhere. And the “authorities”, all those bodies from whom permission is required to run safe and lawful research trials, are all in favour of SMLL, and of continuing to support the innovators pushing for cleaner, safer, more efficient transport that is accessible to everyone.

“There’s genuine excitement about the potential for automated vehicles to revolutionise our transport landscape. But it’s also clear that mobility in urban spaces is complex and multi-factored – and automated technology alone is not enough, we need to consider connectivity, accessibility, the sustainability, energy demands and the carbon footprint of new solutions. And what people really want as mobility options. It’s clear the future of transport is too complex to tackle in isolation. We will only get there by working together. The SMLL ecosystem is far greater than the sum of its parts.”

— Richard Cuerden, Director of TRL Academy

“We have identified a need that goes beyond traditional test tracks to offer customers a progressive connected test environment across the Royal Borough of Greenwich and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It builds on Greenwich’s extensive work in the smart mobility space and continues to put London at the forefront of the future of mobility.”

— Trevor Dorling, Managing Director, Digital Greenwich

“Part of the legacy of the Olympic Games is our ambition to make the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park a testbed for innovative projects across a whole range of areas, including technology, sustainability, education, culture, sport, and inclusion. We offer the UK’s innovators the space and infrastructure needed to trial new approaches and technologies, alongside the chance to understand the practical implications of these for members of the public. ”

— Paul Brickell, Executive Director of Regeneration and Community Partnerships, London Legacy Development Corporation