Babcock partnered with University College London (UCL) on PEARL (People Environment Activity Research Laboratory), which is a 44,000m3 net-zero facility in Dagenham, East London where public settings, such as railway stations and high streets, are simulated to analyse human behaviour as they use and move around infrastructure.
Professor Nick Tyler, Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering at UCL, said: “[PEARL] was conceived so we could see the environment as it is in real life, but to do this we had to realise the world isn't flat, so we needed a moveable floor where we can easily adjust the gradient and surface while also having holes in it."
In PEARL’s centre is the configurable, 600m2 floor which was designed, manufactured and installed by Babcock.
The floor is made up of 441 individually actuated modules that can be raised, lowered and tilted in three dimensions, creating a real-world environment where not everything is perfectly flat.
Using a tablet or laptop, researchers at UCL can configure the flooring for a simulation in as little as two to three minutes compared to the two to three days it could have previously taken.
According to Babcock, the precision of the actuators is to within 0.1mm, providing fine control over the heights and angles of the surface placed on top.
Richard Drake, managing director of Babcock Mission Systems, said: “We were delighted to collaborate with UCL to help create an easily configurable, multi-sensory environment which will help urban planners design public infrastructure that can work for everyone. PEARL was a fascinating project to be involved with.”
Sat on four adjustable feet, each 1.2m square module weighs 840kg and can reportedly be stacked two high for storage.
Together with specialist lighting, dynamic acoustic systems, environmental confounds and olfaction units, the flooring allows UCL to create a configurable, multisensory environment.
Researchers will be able to carry out interaction studies from micro-scale (brain activity) to macro-scale (such as crowd behaviour) and it will be used by a range of faculties including neurosciences, engineering and the arts.
The PEARL project is part of a £50m investment by UCL’s Centre for Transport Studies.
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