Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners announced its collaboration with Georgia Tech and Delta Air Lines to advance autonomous vehicle and infrastructure research. Curiosity Lab is a 5G enabled autonomous vehicle and smart city living laboratory located in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta.
As Georgia furthers its position as a testbed of autonomous mobility and smart city technology, Delta and Curiosity Lab’s collaboration will provide critical seed funding for Georgia Tech researchers.
Equally important, the researchers will have access to the Lab’s one-and-a-half-mile autonomous vehicle test track and living laboratory. Curiosity Lab features dedicated fiber, smart poles and a network operations center for researchers to track and trend data from connected internet-of-things (IoT) devices.
Curiosity Lab is a 5G enabled autonomous vehicle and smart city living laboratory located in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta. The centerpiece of the lab is a 1.5-mile test and demo track, which provides a real-world environment to explore emerging technologies. Additional infrastructure includes a network operations center, smart poles, DSRC units, dedicated fiber and a 25,000 square foot tech incubator.
As autonomous vehicle research advances across the world, Delta sees potential applications for autonomous cars, trucks or buses at airports and beyond. For example, autonomous vehicles could help customers make tight connections across an airport, they could deliver delayed baggage to customers or transport aircraft parts to airports.
West added that this program is an important part of the global airline’s strategy to invest in solutions that empower customers and employees, reduce the stresses of travel and redefine flying over the next five years and decades to come.
“Our 5G-enabled living laboratory will give Georgia Tech researchers the opportunity to push the frontier of emerging technology in a real-world setting that is almost impossible to replicate in a closed lab,” said Betsy Plattenburg, executive director of Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners. “Curiosity Lab also will provide those researchers an opportunity to collaborate with other industry leaders and focus their research on immediate challenges and results.”
“This is a wonderful example of industry-university-local government coming together to advance innovative solutions to the built environment and mobility,” said Debra Lam, managing director for smart cities and inclusive innovation at Georgia Tech. “Providing access to such infrastructure will help our researchers test new technologies and further our mission of serving our community through innovation.”
“Driving the leading edge of emerging technology – like we’ve done with biometrics by launching the first fully biometric terminal in the United States – means Delta can help shape how industry adopts it,” said Gil West, Delta’s chief operating officer. “Autonomous vehicle technology is one of those innovations we see as having the potential to improve employee safety, the customer experience and operational performance, and this partnership will help us explore all of those possibilities.”
