Here’s an interesting experiment: figure out how we’ll live tomorrow – by building a city with no people in it:

“It will be a true laboratory without the complication and safety issues associated with residents,” Brumley says. “Here you can break things and run into things, and get used to how they work, before taking them out into the market.”

And that’s the genius of the idea – want to see how driverless cars, autonomous delivery or mass use of drone drop would affect a city? Test it here…

But what happens if, say, spectrum interference occurs during those deliveries, or with driverless cars at rush hour, even for just a moment? Researchers at CITE could use these experiments to perform a controlled interference with existing wireless systems, which is difficult to test at scale.

Other uses include simulating terrorists incidents.

Of course, it can never eb a truly accurate test without the randomness that the presence of human being brings – but it does sound a whole lot safer than running these experiments in real time in the heart of busy, inhabited cities.