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| In the demo, three trucks traveled maintaining about 50 feet between them to illustrate the safety and convenience intrinsic with Daimler Highway Pilot Connect. |
Suddenly, it’s all about platooning trucks in the name of
fuel efficiency, infrastructure optimization and driver satisfaction.
Volvo has just staged a seminar on the topic. There’s a
multi-manufacturer challenge throughout Europe in several weeks. And Daimler Trucks staged a
massive media event in Germany showcasing its take on trucking communications
with a special emphasis on platooning.
So what is platooning?
It’s not a new concept but one that is enabled by the latest
digital technologies. It’s all about jamming vehicles together in a line where
they all talk to each other while closing up together to gain fuel efficiency
and to increase the capacity of the highway system. It’s most appropriate to
trucks since they use a lot of fuel and a lot of highway.
So there are demonstration projects going on in Europe and
the United States to show how the technology will look and feel.
To my mind the most effective so far is the recent
platooning demo by Daimler. It combines the fuel-saving concept with its
already introduced autonomous driving truck technologies, introduced in Europe
in 2014 and in the United States in 2015.
That “driverless” truck demonstration by the hi-tech Daimler
companies Mercedes-Benz and Freightliner introduced the world to trucks that
could guide themselves on the highway, maintaining a set speed and steering
themselves to keep in lane while the driver kicked back and enjoyed the scenery.
At the time, a lot of us said, that’s all well and good, but
in the end, what does it get us but a more relaxed driver and potentially safer
highways.
The answer is: It gets us platooning.
The basic self-driving technology in Daimler’s vocabulary is
Highway Pilot. The latest rollout is Highway Pilot Connect, and it’s a truly
workable concept that combines the efficiencies of platooning of trucks, and
the economy and ecological gains of better economy with the driver lifestyle
improvement of a self-driving truck.
The demonstration on the German A52 Autobahn featured three
trucks each talking to the others through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)
communications. Drivers have available platooning buttons on the dash and
dash-mounted tablets that relay all the information about the platoon,
including a camera view from the lead truck that allows the following drivers
to see what is going on ahead of the platoon from a camera in the lead truck.
And while the demo featured three trucks to illustrate the
safety and convenience features that are intrinsic with the Daimler Highway
Pilot Connect, the platoon may, in the fullness of time, extend to as many as
10 trucks in a line with only about 50 feet between them.
In practice
In practice, a Connect-enabled truck looks out to find
other Connect vehicles – and it’s an open, standardized technology, so those
other vehicles don’t have to be Daimler products or even the same fleet-owned
trucks. When a similarly equipped truck responds, it’s invited to join the
platoon.
There’s driver involvement in setting up the platoon, but
once established the technology takes over to draw other trucks into the
platoon and pretty soon “We’ve got ourselves a convoy.”
The beauty of the Daimler system is that once engaged, all
trucks are autonomous, self-driving units, basically connected by electronic
drawbars. All driving tasks are taken by the individual trucks while the whole
platoon acts in concert. Drivers can kick back in the seat while watching over
the controls, in exactly the same way that airline pilots keep watch over their
self-guided planes.
There’s a whole lot of technology associated with platooning
that allows for other non-connected vehicles cutting into the platoon to, for instance, get
to an off-ramp or whatever.
And in the German demonstration, when passing an Autobahn on-ramp, the platoon would stretch out to the mandated minimum vehicle-to-vehicle 160-foot spacing to allow for merging traffic. Then as soon as the intersection was cleared and merging traffic moved out of the platoon, it closed up to realize the average 7 percent fuel savings of the trucks in the line.
On the Autobahn?
And in the German demonstration, when passing an Autobahn on-ramp, the platoon would stretch out to the mandated minimum vehicle-to-vehicle 160-foot spacing to allow for merging traffic. Then as soon as the intersection was cleared and merging traffic moved out of the platoon, it closed up to realize the average 7 percent fuel savings of the trucks in the line.
So, where we were scratching our heads over the practicality
of self-driving trucks previously, it all falls into place when combined with
truck-to-truck connectivity.
