The driverless or autonomous car offers a range of challenges and opportunities – technical, economic and social – to the UK and the world. Harrow led the academic research for GATEway, an £8M Innovate UK project led for industry by the Transport Research Laboratory in which the RCA was the principal university. It created a world-leading test-bed for driverless cars that enabled automotive and software industries, local authorities, planners, insurers, Government ministers, policy makers and others to evaluate new vehicles and new technologies applied to existing vehicles, and to understand the human behaviours and attitudes emerging around these new forms of transport. The work is crucial to the future of mobility and to future cities, the connected digital economy, and future manufacturing.
Harrow focused on design research, comprising stakeholder engagement, codesign with user groups, scenario building, studies of users through observation and interview, attitude discovery through traditional and digital means, and dissemination through multiple media. A key motivation was to use autonomous vehicles for social benefit especially for groups ill-served by current transport.
The research led to new knowledge about vehicles, systems and behaviours, much of which was distilled into the RCA GATEway report.
Additional dissemination included: peer-reviewed journal article in Municipal Engineer (2018); paper at 6th International Conference for Universal Design, Nagoya, Japan (2016); feature in exhibition and book NEW OLD: Designing for Our Future Selves, Design Museum, London (2017); book chapter for Institute of Civil Engineering Publishing (in press); keynote for Seoul Smart Mobility (29 September 2016) as a central part of Seoul Design Week.