On-road trials of self-driving platoons of lorries are set to begin in the UK next year, 2018, the Department for Transport has announced.
Led by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and involving partners including DAF Trucks, Ricardo and DHL, the £8m on-road trials, which are expected to take place in 2018, will focus on the use of platooning technology.
This will see two or more vehicles connected with ‘vehicle to-vehicle communication’, allowing them to effectively communicate with each other and operate as a single unit.
During a platooning operation, the lead vehicle takes control of the speed and direction of all the vehicles in the platoon, when the lead vehicle brakes the following vehicles automatically brake with zero reaction time significantly increasing road safety. The constant controlled speed delivers fuel savings and environmental benefits through the reduction of CO2 emissions, whilst the ability to decrease the distance between vehicles increases road network capacity.
According to TRL the trials will be tailored to the unique requirements of UK roads and will collate the evidence required to understand issues such as fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, safety, acceptance by drivers and other road users, implications for future infrastructure, and the commercial case for adoption.
Rob Wallis, chief executive, TRL said: “The UK has an unprecedented opportunity to lead the world in trialling connected vehicle platoons in a real-world environment. TRL and its consortium of leading international partners, have the practical and technical knowledge gained from previous projects to understand what is required to put a connected vehicle platoon on to UK roads safely. The team are now taking that expertise and uniquely applying it within live traffic operations.”
Transport minister Paul Maynard added: “We are investing in technology that will improve people’s lives. Advances such as lorry platooning could benefit businesses through cheaper fuel bills and other road users thanks to lower emissions and less congestion. But first we must make sure the technology is safe and works well on our roads, and that’s why we are investing in these trials.”
As previously reported by The Engineer there have already been a number of trials of platooning technology around the world, including, back in 2012, the SARTRE project (Safe Road Trains for the Environment). This saw a convoy of vehicles travelling just six metres apart from each other formed a road train on a motorway outside Barcelona.
There is also a broader push to develop the technology through the European Truck Platooning challenge, an EU-led project which involves a number of the major truck suppliers.
The UK trials will begin following the successful completion of a rigorous programme of driving simulations, driver training and test track trials over the coming months.
It’s convoy, not platoon.
Why not physically join the lorries together, put them on a separate track and call it a RAILWAY!
I worry that my lack of enthusiasm for this is just me being reactionary and resisting change, but I keep thinking it through over and over and I just can’t see it working safely.
Rather than this, and HS2, a system to get freight off the roads all together, and onto some separate autonomous track system would be far more beneficial. This could deliver containers between the huge distribution parks which are developing alongside all our major conurbations.
I fail to see how this will produce few emissions, lower fuel costs and congestion. The trucks will be travelling the same distance (+/- a driver ?) . How will the forming up and breaking down of a platoon work? What happens in the case of a truck failure in convoy mode? How will other traffic respond to convoys particularly when joining main roads/M-Ways and what happens when drivers try or succeed in getting between the platooned vehicles? (Bound to happen at some point). This seems like a lot of trumpeting of concept which has been mooted for decades. What happens when diesel propulsion is no longer accepted?
This should be a wake up call to the rail freight sector which has been operating platoons (aka trains) for quite a while.
So you come down the slip road of a motorway to find a ‘platoon’ of 7.5t trucks taking up about 30m of road you may stand a chance of slowing down sufficiently to move in behind it, but a ‘platoon’ of articulated trucks would be around 60m so it is unlikely you could join the carriageway without stopping unless the slip road run in is considerably longer than average, and what happens when there are multiple platoons following each other.
Stop wasting time and resources on this nonsense, scrap the titles HS2 / HS3 and rename them Rail Capacity projects and shift all the big freight off the roads and onto the railway where it belongs and would have been if the Freightliner idea of the 1960s had been realised.
I’m contemplating 4 or 5 44t artics with either 3-4 trailers, or a number of normal outfits in close convoy. Having experienced Ozz roadtrains theyre a bit intimidating for a while but the roads theyre on seem to be designated. Robert’s concerns are quite valid, given how some drivers choose to enter (‘elbowing’ in ) and leave (dont plan their exit strategy) our motorways. The concept seems good, and computer control will save some emissions. Trains have been doing this (multiple power units) for many years. Intriguing.
Nevetheless, the more people there are , the more goods will need to be shifted some way and even if its to vast rail terminals, it still needs inland container depots ( like Daventry DIRFT) to then distribute those goods. potentially same number of 7.5t and white vans,. and absolute chaos around those terminals.
If you put a physical link between the lorries, they could travel a lot closer than 6m. Mayby 1 m. If you linked the controls by,say vacuum pipes, which would be fail safe, you could dispense with the comms link between the vehicles. If you put one big engine in the lead vehicle, you could dispense with the engines in the individual units. If you ran them on steel tyres rather than rubber ones, you would reduce the rolling resistance enormously, although of course you would need a matching, say steel, road way of some sort, perhaps a raised rib to aid steering… In fact put the rails, I shall call them, between where you want to go from, to where you want to go to.
And make the ‘rails’ really wide apart, say 7 feet or so, to allow for really large loads and economies of scale.
Nah, forget it That would never catch on, would it…?
So where does the reduction in CO2 emissions come from? Three lorries doing 60mph up the M1 in a convoy still equals three lorries, regardless of how they are controlled.
I think the CO2 reduction comes from the idea of them being so close together as to take advantage of the slip stream effect and hence needing less throttle to operate at the same speed as the vehicle in front.
Don’t they do that already at 60mph in the inside lane of the M1 ?
Judging by the one that was 3 feet off my rear bumper in the 50mph road works on the M1 then yes. This was less then 24 hours after the fatal mini bus crash. You would think with all that weight and power they would learn braking distances and a modicum of common sense.
All this means is that when the front one crashes – which it will sooner or later – they will all crash.
What happens when they have to go through sets of traffic lights, one lorry may go through, but the others would have to stop, what happens then. Also what happens if the WiFi signal is lost through a number of possibilities. And if the lorry up front hits something dead crash all the other lorries will pile into the back of each other. I could list a lot more things that could easily go wrong but there’s no point as the powers that be will do it anyway with no thought behind their ideas.
Might as well have a three trailer road train like in Austraila, one driver, one engine, less technology.
Makes more sense to me.
People saying emissions won’t be reduced, please read. Everyone else can ignore.
I learned in school that the same work requires the same energy. The example given was moving weights distances, and is always the same. I said it didn’t work because when I ride a bike it’s much easier than running. This is a similar case. Not quite as elementary, but not rocket science.
I don’t have time to think up and type out a clear explanation, but it seems obvious to me (having thought about it before) that fuel use and indeed emissions would be reduced. I’ll give you two things to think about, though:
1) identical twins driving identical cars on identical tracks, but one accelerates and brakes as hard as the car can manage and the other drives very smoothly, keeping the ‘revs’ needle in the green. Which uses more fuel? Vehicles in a convoy app and start less, and if they’re automated, the computer will at least theoretically be better than most drivers at fuel efficient driving.
2) We know how rubberneckers slow traffic, but if I slow down to avoid hitting an animal in the road, and there are plenty of cars on the road, that congestion creeps backwards for a long long way because people take time to react and brake. Even if they can see that there is congestion ahead, they drive in quickly and break at the last minute, making the situation worse for drivers behind them. They put speed limits on UK motorways in front of these to break them up. Some countries have had police cars driving abreast at a smooth speed, resetting the traffic… I’m sure there are many other techniques. This is less of a problem with convoys.
I’m sure there are more reasons, including aerodynamics and things that the vehicles can anticipate and stuff, but these are two that are clear to me.
Have the people who think up these ideas (including the petrol / diesel thing for 2040) driven on the roads in the UK recently?
So they’re just really, really expensive trailers.
I get the technological challenge and the supposed benefits, but there’s not one positive comment on here which says a lot. Are the only people pro this scheme the people who are being funded to do it? Is the only target really just lower emissions?