Autonomous mobility and user perception: A Case of City as a Lab in Slovenia

Autonomous vehicles (AV) have the potential to disrupt the entire transport industry. Technology of AV offers many opportunities as for example reduction of road accidents, fewer congestions on the roads, lower number of vehicles while having better utilization. Beside significant contribution of electric vehicles (EV) to cleaner environment, fully AV also bring new social element as they enable mobility for all. In addition, the use of digital technologies in combination with AV introduces a radical and new paradigm in the transportation, where the lines between car ownership, rental, and lease modes are more and more blurred. To explore the potential of AV in smart city context, AV Living Lab has been established on the premises of BTC City. 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 Lab 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 cross-industry environment. We describe a specific use case of AV shuttle driving and its human experience perception, which was evaluated after a large scale pilot demonstration.