VAL is a type of automatic rubber-tyred people mover technology, based on an invention by Professor Robert Gabillard from the Université Lille Nord de France. It was designed in the early 1980s by Matra and first used for the then new metro system in Lille. VAL is one of the world's first driverless mass transit rail network to serve a city centre (preceded only by the Port Island Line in Kobe, Japan); this VAL system was the first fully automated driverless metro in Europe starting service in Lille in 1983.