Finland’s Helsinki Region Transport-acquired electric buses will serve as development and testing platforms for smart mobility services in the city.

Coordinated by VTT Technical Research Centre, the three-year Living Lab Bus project will see development of new user-oriented services.

Introduced at the start of the year, the project will use electric buses to examine a range of smart services and technologies such as user interfaces and sensors.

"The goal is to create a new type of everyday development environment for accelerating the product development of businesses by means of agile experiments."

It will not only develop latest services for transport users and service developers, but will also launch new low-cost transport systems.

The three-year project includes sub projects of Cinia One (cloud services and interfaces), Ajeco (secure multichannel communications), Foreca (weather and road weather services), EEE Innovations (smart transport ICT solutions), iQ Payments (mobile payment solutions) and Linkker (electric bus).

It also features supporting research projects undertaken by VTT, University of Tampere, Aalto University and Tampere University of Technology.

The project will be used by the Helsinki Region Transport, City of Tampere, the City of Helsinki, and the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, Tekes.

VTT project manager Raine Hautala was quoted by Traffic Technology Today as saying: "The goal is to create a new type of everyday development environment for accelerating the product development of businesses by means of agile experiments, in close cooperation with end-users and research institutions.

"Potential new solutions include easy-to-use passenger feedback solutions, automated passenger counting, and automated road condition observations."