A key VLL goal is to contribute to ecosustainable
and optimized transportation. In contrast
to a traditional living lab (see, for example,www.citymart.com or www.cityfujisawa.ne.jp/
livinglab/jnoll/), our lab is embedded in a massively
multiuser networked 3D virtual environment,
rather than the real world. Therefore, our
living lab can be accessed by anyone, from anywhere,
at anytime. Such networked 3D environments
are called 3D (social) virtual worlds,2–4
or the 3D Internet (by IBM). In the 3D Internet,
users are represented as “avatars” (graphical
self-representations) that share the same 3D
space and can interact with the environment
and other avatars in a natural way. This feature
is very powerful because it lets us investigate
interactive phenomena in driving, such as
car following,5 escape and “herding” behaviors
during emergency situations,6 and the rubbernecking
phenomenon.7