The term is used across many disciplines to describe experimental research and new product development platforms and environments.
They may vary from hands-on prototype development in manufacturing industries such as automobiles (known as "mules"), aircraft engines or systems and to intellectual property refinement in such fields as computer software development shielded from the hazards of testing live.
In software development, testbedding is a method of testing a particular module (function, class, or library) in an isolated fashion.
[citation needed] A typical testbed could include software, hardware, and networking components.
[2][3] Such usage of testbeds was originally pioneered by Rolls Royce in their development of jet engines.