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From simple reversing alarms to steer-by-wire systems, driver assistance mechanisms are becoming increasingly common. Research programmes are continually pushing back boundaries, and technologies that take up the reins of control in a truck, from automatic gearboxes to electronically applied brakes, are emerging as real possibilities.
Depending on your point of view these systems either threaten your livelihood or pave a path to fewer accidents, lower fuel bills and bigger profits.
A brief trawl of current technology and projects could leave you drowning in acronyms:
AVCSS (Advanced Vehicle Control and
Safety Systems); ASSIST (Autonomous Support and Safety Intervention Systems); and SAVE (System for effective Assessment of driver alertness and Vehicle control in Emergency situations). But the message from all quarters engaged in research is pretty clear: automating trucks can make them a lot safer—and making trucks safer saves money.
This is the prime mover for
researchers, but relief of traffic congestion is touted as a major benefit. Automation technology allows vehicles to be packed onto roads much closer together, making more efficient Use of existing infrastructure—something researchers say will have to be looked at, given the Government's reluctance to build more roads.
Automation technology can be roughly split into two camps: the first where the road infrastructure needs to be adapted; and the second where the technology is confined to the vehicles themselves.
Roadmap
The first method, sometimes called Automated Highway Systems (AHS), has been successfully tested in San Diego, California, and Japan, where research began in the late 198os.
The American version was born out of technology developed to allow snowploughs to work on covered mountain roads by tracking magnetic 'nails' inserted into the surface. Adaptations were made and the technology was extended to an automatic Freightliner truck and "platoons" of cars.
Receivers on board vehicles detect the magnets, 25mm in diameter and height, which are inserted into the road around 1.2m apart with alternating polar
ities showing to the surface. This creates a kind of binary code which vehicles can follow with a claimed accuracy of 5mm laterally and 5omm longitudinally.
Developers say the system is failsafe and able to work in all environmental conditions. They estimate it would cost around Sio,000 to equip a mile of road (or one lane of a motorway).
But the US government was reluctant to follow the manufacturers' lead, says David Golding of Foresight, a UK governmentfunded drive to co-ordinate research into new vehicle technology. "Everything stalled after tests in San Diego," he says. "The US government just wasn't interested in taking on the burden of changing the road network."
Golding adds that politicians in Japan are adopting a more integrated approach to A H S, but he predicts that automatic fleets of drone cars or trucks are still some way off, although a system was tested in Japan on the ho Shin Etsu expressway between Tokyo and Nagano in 1995.
European politicians are unlikely to follow suit by accepting changes to the road network, he says: "The emphasis is definitely on equipping trucks instead—and the technology is al ready here."
Investigation in this field began in earnest at the beginning of the 19905 with the pan-European research project Prometheus. This paved the way for PROMOTE (Programme for Mobility and Transportation in Europe) which was divided into various areas of research, including anticollision, headway control for trucks in anticipation of AHS, and stop-go technology for urban delivery rounds.
DaimlerChrysler recently unveiled its electronic drawbar which it believes will allow convoys of automatic trucks to follow a lead vehicle with a driver within five years (CM to-16 June).
In the UK the Transport Research Laboratory and the University of Southampton are working on the safe application of automatic convoys in a project called TACO (Technology for Advanced Co-operative Driving).
But to drive themselves, rather than simply playing follow the leader, these systems will need to be made more sophisticated.
Last June a joint project between the Universities of Parma and Pavia tested a system using two black-and-white cameras and a Pentium MMX zoo processor computer. It was able to drive a vehicle for nearly 2,000km on public roads in real traffic conditions.
Costs Neither of these technologies demands modifications to the road infrastructure, which implies cheaper and quicker implementation. That's something that is bound to impress politicians when they begin to adopt automation.
In some respects automatic trucks rely on amalgamations of existing technology—splice together a Global Positioning System with a Collision Avoidance System and an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Bob's your uncle.
Eaton launched the Vorad Collision Avoidance System in the States several years ago. Using radar to detect objects in blind spots, Vorad is claimed to massively reduce accident rates by alerting drivers to potential collisions. It failed to launch on the European market two years ago, but Eaton has not given up.
Sounding alarms to alert drivers to potentially dangerous actions could be extended to intervening and taking over control of the truck, say the company.
ACCs are also beginning to make it onto the roads, albeit only in the S-Class Mercedes-Benz at the moment, and they show how the distance between trucks can be controlled.
The speed of a vehicle equipped with ACC is reduced by the system if a slower road user is being approached or pulls out in front. Similar technology is used in the electronic drawbar. Lucas Varity is working on an ACC with Thompson for an anonymous client. Project director Nick Ford says Lucas is in discussion with every major truck manufacturer in Europe about the potential ACC has for trucks.
Every one of these manufacturers intends to put its own system on the market, he says, but none of them was prepared to discuss these projects with CM.
As the roads grind to a halt momentum seems to be gathering behind the need for things to change. Automation could be the only real alternative facing road transport problems in the UK— and to some it will cure all of the industry's ills.
But drivers still have a while longer behind the wheel. Estimates for automation vary wildly from io years to a century, and in every case the sticking point isn't the slow pace of technology but the reluctance of society and politicians to keep up.
Maybe it isn't time for them to declare war on the robots. As one source in the DOT told CM: "Driverless trucks are the roadgoing version of GM food."