Convoys of trucks are not an unusual sight on the stretch of the E20 highway that winds its way past the Scania factory in Södertälje, Sweden.
But local residents and regular road users have cause to look twice at this particular convoy. Perhaps the lines look a little too neat, the gaps a little too exact? Maybe a little like the trucks are being driven by computers.
Scania has been testing automatic platooning technology on the E20 for several months. Unlike the locals, I can see the test driver flick the switch that engages the automatic mode. Somewhere within the truck, a computer processor begins to receive and send positional data over high frequency wifi from radar sensors in the fronts of the three trucks in our convoy. The processor analyses the data and issues thousands of commands to accelerate or decelerate our truck and keep an exact distance from the truck in front of us.
Automatic platooning can lead to fuel savings of up to 10%, says Scania. The closer the gaps between the trucks, the less turbulent the air flow and the greater the savings. Scania's engineers have reduced the gap to one second, about two metres, and aim to get it down to just half a second. The computer-controlled platooning system takes 0.1 seconds to make a speed adjustment. Most of that time is the signal travelling from the lead truck to all the trucks behind it. A driver's reaction time is 0.5 seconds and varies. The machines are better than us.
It is easy to overhype platooning. Fuel efficiency in heavy vehicles is at a premium as never before and only gained with great expense and effort. According to Scania a 10% fuel efficiency improvement would take about 10 years of engine development to achieve. Every drop of fuel saved adds to a customer’s bottom line.
Automatic platooning, which is “really just adaptive cruise control with added functionality”, says the Scania test driver, offers a cheap shortcut to those fuel savings. Travelling on a busy public highway, its difficult to notice the difference between automatic and manual control. What is clear though is that the technology is at a stage when it could be quickly deployed.
The company has been researching platooning for 18 months and clocked up some 379,000 km driving in platoons a maximum of 5 vehicles long.
Dr Harald Ludanek, executive vice president and head of research and development at Scania, says that truck platoons will be one of the first widespread applications for vehicle to vehicle communications technology because of the direct tangible benefits to its customers. “In the truck business, with the high mileage you are travelling and the amount of exhaust you have because of the volume of the engine, you will get much earlier payback than passenger cars,” he says.
A lack of industry-wide standards for vehicle to vehicle communication is holding back technology such as automatic truck platooning. Those standards could be introduced as early as 2015 for both trucks and cars, if a MoU signed by industry consortium “car 2 car” is adhered to. However, Ludanek says the first platoons will most likely not include passenger cars, because the benefits of platooning for trucks can only be fully realised in pure truck convoys.
He says: “It gives much more value because the drag coefficient of the truck convoy gives much more benefit when you come closer. You can drive in the shadow of another truck more than in the shadow of a passenger car, because you have much more area. The active surface you have is much higher. And when you can reduce the total resistance by connecting you have a greater potential to save.”
Scania plans a tiered approach to the introduction of platooning. Truckers already platoon, albeit manually.The company kindly calls this current level “full driver control”. The next level is the current technology demonstration phase - a version of adaptive cruise control. The third and final stage is fully automatic control on highways with both automatic longitudinal and lateral control.
The company believes the phased approach will help build acceptance of the systems in professional drivers. Anders Johansson is project manager for Platooning, Intelligent Transport Systems and Solutions for Scania. He says: “Platooning is an extension of the braking system. All we are doing is reducing the time it takes for the vehicles to stop. The driver has to trust that system. Once installed, the longer you are driving with the system, the more confident you will get.”
The radar sensors used to sense the distance use standard technology for cars. In the production version there will be more sensors. Johansson says: "It's an evolution. We will add more and sensors and wifi and the trucks will be able to get closer and closer," he says. “But I don't think we will see platoons longer than three or four vehicles, although they could be 10 or 12 vehicles long.”
If the standards are passed soon enough, we could see automatic truck platooning on European roads within the next few years. Meanwhile, on the test track at Scania’s Technical Centre is a truck bristling with sensors and computers demoing technology that will not be seen on the market, if at all, until the 2020s. Scania’s most advanced driver assist system is a truck able to drive fully autonomously at speeds of up to 50 km per hour.
The truck manufacturer's most advanced assistance systems allow the driver to watch films and check email while stuck in traffic
The technology is called Traffic Jam Pilot and it’s designed to relax stressed out truckers stuck in traffic on motorways. The autopilot mode only engages on highways when moving under 50 km per hour - it would not work in an urban environment. The testbed truck, which took two years to develop, is equipped with a combination of radar,ultrasound sensors and cameras, all linked into seven PCs. The system dongs electronically when the test driver engages full automatic mode. He then picks up an iPad, starts watching a film and checks his email. Information about speed and distance between vehicles is displayed around the edges of the iPad. If the truck needs his attention, for example if a pedestrian wanders in front, an alarm on the iPad sounds and it stops.
It's disturbing to see a driver so blatantly not paying attention to the road, even on a test track and especially when engineers wander in front of the truck to demonstrate the collision avoidance. But stories abound of truckers with their feet up and laptops out, watching videos while stuck in slow moving traffic. "It happens", the test driver says, "We just want to make sure it happens safely."
Like automatic platooning, elements of Traffic Jam Pilot will be introduced in gradual stages. But Scania’s goal is to automate trucks as much as possible in order to make them as safe as possible. Dr Harald Ludanek says: “There are other issues to resolve - legal, economic, regulatory, insurance, operator acceptance. But the technology can be introduced step-by-step. The lane departure warning and lane assist is not so far away from being introduced. But, the overall functionality will follow later in a closed, secure and safe system.”
The first steps in the journey to improve safety through automatic assistance systems are being taken now. Every year around 35,000 people are killed and 1.2 million people injured on Europe's roads. Around 10% of those deaths involve trucks. From next year, new European legislation requires that all new trucks have to be equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking Systems (AEBS). It is hoped AEBS will stop or at least mitigate the effects of trucks in many incidents.
Ludanek says that Scania’s trucks are ready: “Our system uses the common radar system from passenger cars of 77 Ghz. This ensures that we fulfil all the demands of the automatic braking system. But the radar is different from the technology in passenger cars. You have higher load, higher weight, you have another dynamic behaviour and you have another braking behaviour. And its longer, a passenger normally has a maximum length of 6m and a truck has 20m in Europe.”