A total of 280 LED lights lining 9 km of roads and paths forms the framework for DOLL Living Lab—the biggest living lab in Europe for street lighting and Smart City solutions. “Unique” is the verdict from Kent Larson, who heads up the City Science initiative at MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
DOLL—the Danish Outdoor Lighting Laboratory— is working to develop energy-efficient solutions with elevated design quality for public spaces, and is now opening DOLL Living Lab in Albertslund, Copenhagen. Apart from functioning as a visitor and control centre, the new facility will serve as an independent laboratory, working with DOLL Quality Lab and Virtual Lab at DTU to ensure the manufacturers and others can have the effects of their LED lights appropriately documented.
The lab will also test solutions such as CO2-free street lights, new sensors for controlling the amount of lighting in order to save energy, street lights with built-in Wi-Fi, and other innovative solutions designed to make cities smarter. This combination is unique.
“Even though we have previously seen living labs focused on lighting, the actual combination of the number of companies involved, the research-based documentation, the physical size of the laboratory and the variation in the technologies set up and tested is unique,” says Kent Larson, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—and one of the first researchers to develop trials involving what are known as ‘living labs’ in everyday settings.
DOLL Living Lab opens the door to increased innovation
A living lab such as DOLL gives manufacturers and researchers the opportunity to apply research and development ideas in a natural urban environment that can provide new knowledge about the experience of the light or technologies developed in the lab.
“Experience shows that living labs like DOLL contribute to raising the level of innovation. They provide research and development departments with valuable information about how consumers actually accept and use the products, allowing researchers and manufacturers to refine their solutions and adapt them to user wishes and requirements,” explains Kent Larson.
Knowledge collection is part of the smart city concept
A number of international companies have already spotted that DOLL is the ideal facility for developing Smart City solutions, and are therefore interested in using living lab trials to collect data about traffic conditions and the like.
For example, DOLL has entered into a partnership with the American company Cisco, which is a world leader in intelligent control of future infrastructure and energy consumption in our cities. The lab is also partnering the international enterprise Citelum, which works with sustainable lighting and traffic management solutions.
DOLL is run under the partnership organization Gate 21 in collaboration with DTU Fotonik and the Municipality of Albertslund, and receives funding from GreenLabs DK under the Danish Energy Agency, Capital Denmark Growth Forum, and Region Zealand.