(credit: EU Truck Platooning )
When people talk of self-driving vehicles, it's usually in reference to passenger cars that will whisk us to and from work while we recline in comfort, reading a book or catching up on Netflix. This is understandable; the car makers, technology companies, and other autonomous advocates want to raise public awareness and acceptance of self-driving technology and linking it to a frustration-free commute is certainly a way of doing that.
But it's not just passenger vehicles that are going to go hands-free—the implications for road haulage and the freight sector are going to be massive. Over in Europe, a demonstration of semi-autonomous trucking called the European Truck Platooning Challenge wrapped up successfully on Wednesday. Organized by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, it involved trucks from six different European manufacturers (DAF Trucks, Daimler, IVECO, MAN, Scania, and Volvo).
A video of the truck platoons arriving in Rotterdam on April 6th.
Several trucks from each company left their home bases and traveled in platoons to the Dutch port of Rotterdam, arriving en masse on April 6. The trucks in each platoon were connected via Wi-Fi that enabled them to be synchronized and therefore driven much closer to each other than would be the case with just a human driver on board. Now, it's important to note that we're not talking about completely autonomous (level 4) vehicles here—there was a driver on board each vehicle. But the trucks were equipped with radar and optical sensors, making them at least as smart as the semi-autonomous Teslas, Audis, and other cars we've been driving here at Ars recently.
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