Mercedes Benz debuts truck platooning system with automated airfield snow clearance demo

In what it describes as a “step forward on the road to the fully connected and autonomous commercial vehicle”, Mercedes Benz parent company Daimler has for the first time demonstrated its system for operating a convoy of vehicles working in a coordinated task with only one of the vehicles controlled by a human driver, with four vehicles working together to simulate clearing snow from an airfield. Known as truck platooning, this technology has potential for increasing productivity on normal roads and in enclosed facilities.

The demonstration involved four Arco tractor units equipped with Daimler’s new Remote Truck Interface (RTI), which coordinates data exchange between the vehicles and operates three of them remotely. All the vehicles use dual GPS tracking and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, which exchanges a full telematics data set every 0.1 seconds.

Every vehicle equipped with the RTI can act as the lead or a follower in the platoon; the driver just needs to designate the lead and define the number and sequence of follower vehicles on a control pad on the dashboard. The convoy can include up to 14 units.