Autonomous cars have some test history in Japan and in the US, but large vehicles have also been quietly assembling the technology bank required to join the club. For the general public, a compact car driving itself is an exciting novelty, and a glimpse into the future. But a 44‐tonne autonomous driving (AD) truck, operating in the same way raises fears as well as eyebrows.

Most of the major truck makers are looking at autonomous trucks as a possible addition to the ‘platooning’ idea, where several heavy vehicles run together in a train to save fuel. But platooning is fraught with public acceptability issues, and the infrastructure investment to segregate them from regular traffic would be huge. The idea has been around for over twenty years, but most industry watchers think that it carries too much baggage, for now anyway. Enter, stage left, the autonomous truck.

Legislation

For the heavy truck industry, the legislative burden of successive Euro emission levels may have drained their R&D budgets, but they’ve not been idle. In fact, while they have been led by legislators to the cleaner engines table, those tables have been turned when it comes to safety. From November registrations onward, all heavy trucks sold in the EU must have AEBS (advanced emergency braking systems) and LDW (lane departure warning).

We can’t imagine that this legislation would have been framed if truck makers had not first invented the devices. But when it comes to autonomy, there are legal bars to putting vehicles on the road in Europe that do not have the driver in control. For ‘control’ read steering, because the myriad cruise control and braking systems that are already in place do not clash with this legislation.

The primary barrier is the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. That was written when AD was the stuff of science fiction, and it’s clearly in need of an update. But modifications have, and continue to be made to this legislation, so it is not a closed door. UN/ECE Regulation R 79 for steering systems made space for park assist systems, but limiting the speeds to 10km/h.

Demo

Despite this, Daimler Trucks ran a pre‐IAA event in July 2014, deploying Daimler board members, transport ministers, parliamentary representatives, university professors, and the private use of a long stretch of newly‐completed A14 motorway near Magdeburg in Germany, where they showcased their latest technology ‐ the AD truck. A mix of cameras and radar sensors are used to keep Daimler’s prototype AD truck on course. With predictive powertrain control (PPC) looking 3km ahead, a radar sensor in the grille scans the immediate road ahead. It has a range of 250m, scanning an 18 degree segment, with an additional short‐range sensor covering 70m and a 130 degree view. The radar sensor is already used in proximity control and electronic brake assist (EBA).

The road is also scanned by stereo cameras (developed from the mono version in LDW) with a range of 100m, and a scope of 45 degree horizontal and 27 degree. vertical. It identifies lanes, pedestrians, moving and stationary objects, the condition of the road surface and information on traffic signs. Data from side sensors is ‘fused’ to present a complete picture, which can be shared with other AD vehicles.

LDW data is used to control that vital element, steering.

Same suit, different pocket

Moving the development on needs onhighway evaluation, mixing it with regular traffic. And so to Las Vegas, Nevada in May 2015. It is one of 5 US States that has passed legislation allowing AD vehicles on public roads.

With the breadth of Daimler Trucks global product portfolio, they didn’t need to jump through hoops to bring a European Actros to the US; they could use their leading class 8 truck, the Freightliner Cascadia Evolution. So the shelves that are buckling under the weight of safety devices in the Mercedes‐Benz R&D department in Stuttgart were plundered, and the booty shipped over to Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) in Portland, Oregon.

Like the plot of a novel, it now becomes clear that the safety devices that have been introduced over the last 15 years have been stepping‐stones to AD. Cruise control, their adaptive and predictive siblings, automated manual transmissions (AMTs), EBA, AEBS and LDW are now ready to all join hands.

Departing the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, our Cascadia tractor‐trailer combination was driven in conventional mode. At a specific waypoint on the freeway, the driver was given the option to let ‘Highway Pilot’ take over. Accepting the offer, the driver sat back, feet off pedals and hands off the wheel. We’ve driven heavy trucks that can competently drive up hill and down dale, but turning corners was a novel addition.

Wolfgang Bernhard, member of the board of management of Daimler AG, responsible for Daimler Trucks & Buses says that drivers will be able to do other work while a truck is in AD mode, and he claims that the stress currently induced by the boredom of long motorway driving shifts, will actually be reduced. We see issues here.

The blame game

After being wowed by the technology, and the ceremonial screwing‐on of the first official legal AV (autonomous vehicle) licence plate by the Nevada State Governor, Brian Sandoval, there are however questions to be answered over the very nub of who is in control.

In the event of an accident, we currently look to the driver, if there is no apparent mechanical failure. Daimler says that the driver still remains in control, “We are not talking about driverless trucks,” declared Martin Daum, President and CEO of DTNA.

But we do wonder how a driver can be deemed to be still in control, if he is filling out worksheets, or booking backloads – part of what “other work” might well be. We know that AEBS3 can execute a full pressure emergency stop with no driver input, but if a driver does not actually have his eyes on the road ahead, and one of the safety systems that highway pilot relies on fails, who would be responsible for any resulting collision?

If a driver is being encouraged to get on with ‘other work’, how culpable can he or she be? We understand that this is a development project, but there are some questions that need answering at the outset, and this is one of them.

Yes, there are autopilots on commercial aircraft, and they are accepted as part of enabling technology. But air traffic control works within minimum tolerances of 1,000 feet (305m) of vertical separation, plenty of time for a pilot to act and intervene if needed. A truck’s separation from other traffic is not in that league, and we would argue that the driver’s attention needs to be directed to where the constantly changing environment is unfolding, out on the road.

The debate will be interesting, and Daimler has moved it on in one big step.

“It remains our goal to be in a position to offer the Highway Pilot in series produced vehicles from the middle of the coming decade,” declared Daum.

He’s clearly not daunted by any of the hurdles that lie ahead.

Sci‐fi movie fans may recall the words of Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. “Human decisions are removed from strategic defence. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self‐aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.” Of course, it could never happen with trucks.

Supertruck project

Also wheeled out at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was Freightliner’s answer to the challenge thrown out to the truck industry by the US Department of Energy in 2009. The so‐called ‘Stimulus Act’ applied to all US industry, but the truck business was charged with a 50% efficiency improvement in tonnes moved per litre/kilometre.

Federal funds backed the DoE’s ‘Supertruck’ project, and Freightliner’s approach was to take a 2009 Cascadia tractor as their baseline. They’ve either worked miracles, or that baseline was a poor performer, because the result is a claimed 115% efficiency gain. To be fair, they have thrown a lot of ideas and good sense at it. Adding a trailer to the equation, aerodynamics were radically improved with both wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

Other major elements were a down‐speeded engine, waste‐heat recovery (into lithium‐ion batteries) and extensive use of aluminium (cutting 1,270kg off a tractor and trailer tare weight). T J Reed, DTNA’s director of product strategy says, “There’s so much more that can be done, if legislators would work with the industry better.” He says that if the bulky exterior mirrors were replaced with cameras and interior screens, it could save as much as 1.5% on fuel.

Autonomous cars have some test history in Japan and in the US, but large vehicles have also been quietly assembling the technology bank required to join the club. For the general public, a compact car driving itself is an exciting novelty, and a glimpse into the future. But a 44‐tonne autonomous driving (AD) truck, operating in the same way raises fears as well as eyebrows.

Most of the major truck makers are looking at autonomous trucks as a possible addition to the ‘platooning’ idea, where several heavy vehicles run together in a train to save fuel. But platooning is fraught with public acceptability issues, and the infrastructure investment to segregate them from regular traffic would be huge. The idea has been around for over twenty years, but most industry watchers think that it carries too much baggage, for now anyway. Enter, stage left, the autonomous truck.

Legislation

For the heavy truck industry, the legislative burden of successive Euro emission levels may have drained their R&D budgets, but they’ve not been idle. In fact, while they have been led by legislators to the cleaner engines table, those tables have been turned when it comes to safety. From November registrations onward, all heavy trucks sold in the EU must have AEBS (advanced emergency braking systems) and LDW (lane departure warning).

We can’t imagine that this legislation would have been framed if truck makers had not first invented the devices. But when it comes to autonomy, there are legal bars to putting vehicles on the road in Europe that do not have the driver in control. For ‘control’ read steering, because the myriad cruise control and braking systems that are already in place do not clash with this legislation.

The primary barrier is the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. That was written when AD was the stuff of science fiction, and it’s clearly in need of an update. But modifications have, and continue to be made to this legislation, so it is not a closed door. UN/ECE Regulation R 79 for steering systems made space for park assist systems, but limiting the speeds to 10km/h.

Demo

Despite this, Daimler Trucks ran a pre‐IAA event in July 2014, deploying Daimler board members, transport ministers, parliamentary representatives, university professors, and the private use of a long stretch of newly‐completed A14 motorway near Magdeburg in Germany, where they showcased their latest technology ‐ the AD truck. A mix of cameras and radar sensors are used to keep Daimler’s prototype AD truck on course. With predictive powertrain control (PPC) looking 3km ahead, a radar sensor in the grille scans the immediate road ahead. It has a range of 250m, scanning an 18 degree segment, with an additional short‐range sensor covering 70m and a 130 degree view. The radar sensor is already used in proximity control and electronic brake assist (EBA).

The road is also scanned by stereo cameras (developed from the mono version in LDW) with a range of 100m, and a scope of 45 degree horizontal and 27 degree. vertical. It identifies lanes, pedestrians, moving and stationary objects, the condition of the road surface and information on traffic signs. Data from side sensors is ‘fused’ to present a complete picture, which can be shared with other AD vehicles.

LDW data is used to control that vital element, steering.

Same suit, different pocket

Moving the development on needs onhighway evaluation, mixing it with regular traffic. And so to Las Vegas, Nevada in May 2015. It is one of 5 US States that has passed legislation allowing AD vehicles on public roads.

With the breadth of Daimler Trucks global product portfolio, they didn’t need to jump through hoops to bring a European Actros to the US; they could use their leading class 8  truck, the Freightliner Cascadia Evolution. So the shelves that are buckling under the weight of safety devices in the Mercedes‐Benz R&D department in Stuttgart were plundered, and the booty shipped over to Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) in Portland, Oregon.

Like the plot of a novel, it now becomes clear that the safety devices that have been introduced over the last 15 years have been stepping‐stones to AD. Cruise control, their adaptive and predictive siblings, automated manual transmissions (AMTs), EBA, AEBS and LDW are now ready to all join hands.

Departing the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, our Cascadia tractor‐trailer combination was driven in conventional mode. At a specific waypoint on the freeway, the driver was given the option to let ‘Highway Pilot’ take over. Accepting the offer, the driver sat back, feet off pedals and hands off the wheel. We’ve driven heavy trucks that can competently drive up hill and down dale, but turning corners was a novel addition.

Wolfgang Bernhard, member of the board of management of Daimler AG, responsible for Daimler Trucks & Buses says that drivers will be able to do other work while a truck is in AD mode, and he claims that the stress currently induced by the boredom of long motorway driving shifts, will actually be reduced. We see issues here.

The blame game

After being wowed by the technology, and the ceremonial screwing‐on of the first official legal AV (autonomous vehicle) licence plate by the Nevada State Governor, Brian Sandoval, there are however questions to be answered over the very nub of who is in control.

In the event of an accident, we currently look to the driver, if there is no apparent mechanical failure. Daimler says that the driver still remains in control, “We are not talking about driverless trucks,” declared Martin Daum, President and CEO of DTNA.

But we do wonder how a driver can be deemed to be still in control, if he is filling out worksheets, or booking backloads – part of what “other work” might well be. We know that AEBS3 can execute a full pressure emergency stop with no driver input, but if a driver does not actually have his eyes on the road ahead, and one of the safety systems that highway pilot relies on fails, who would be responsible for any resulting collision?

If a driver is being encouraged to get on with ‘other work’, how culpable can he or she be? We understand that this is a development project, but there are some questions that need answering at the outset, and this is one of them.

Yes, there are autopilots on commercial aircraft, and they are accepted as part of enabling technology. But air traffic control works within minimum tolerances of 1,000 feet (305m) of vertical separation, plenty of time for a pilot to act and intervene if needed. A truck’s separation from other traffic is not in that league, and we would argue that the driver’s attention needs to be directed to where the constantly changing environment is unfolding, out on the road.

The debate will be interesting, and Daimler has moved it on in one big step.

“It remains our goal to be in a position to offer the Highway Pilot in series produced vehicles from the middle of the coming decade,” declared Daum.

He’s clearly not daunted by any of the hurdles that lie ahead.

Sci‐fi movie fans may recall the words of Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. “Human decisions are removed from strategic defence. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self‐aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.” Of course, it could never happen with trucks.

Supertruck project

Also wheeled out at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway was Freightliner’s answer to the challenge thrown out to the truck industry by the US Department of Energy in 2009. The so‐called ‘Stimulus Act’ applied to all US industry, but the truck business was charged with a 50% efficiency improvement in tonnes moved per litre/kilometre.

Federal funds backed the DoE’s ‘Supertruck’ project, and Freightliner’s approach was to take a 2009 Cascadia tractor as their baseline. They’ve either worked miracles, or that baseline was a poor performer, because the result is a claimed 115% efficiency gain. To be fair, they have thrown a lot of ideas and good sense at it. Adding a trailer to the equation, aerodynamics were radically improved with both wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

Other major elements were a down‐speeded engine, waste‐heat recovery (into lithium‐ion batteries) and extensive use of aluminium (cutting 1,270kg off a tractor and trailer tare weight). T J Reed, DTNA’s director of product strategy says, “There’s so much more that can be done, if legislators would work with the industry better.” He says that if the bulky exterior mirrors were replaced with cameras and interior screens, it could save as much as 1.5% on fuel.