Chauffeur Shows Off:  Demos of Electronic Tow-Bar Functions Dazzle Crowd in Italy
IVsource.net
14 June 2003

As the culmination of over three years worth of work, the CHAUFFEUR 2 team held a public demonstration of their advanced driver assistance systems for heavy trucks.   Both futuristic (platooning ) and near-term (CHAUFFEUR Assistant) functions were demonstrated on the IVECO test track in Balocco, Italy in early May.  Invited guests included the European Commission, the French Ministry of Transport, the French labs LIVIC and INRIA, MAN trucks, Centro Research Fiat, and international researchers.  IVsource was there, too, and here’s a synopsis of the action.

As the culmination of over three years worth of work, the CHAUFFEUR 2 team held a public demonstration of their advanced driver assistance systems for heavy trucks.   Both futuristic (electronic tow bar) and near-term (CHAUFFEUR Assistant) functions were demonstrated on the IVECO test track in Balocco, Italy (near Torino) in early May.  

In addition to project team members and their managers from DaimlerChrysler, IVECO, Renault Trucks, Bosch, Wabco, and others, the invited guests included the European Commission, the French Ministry of Transport, the French labs LIVIC and INRIA, MAN trucks, Centro Research Fiat, and international researchers and laboratories.

Why Truck Platoons?

European Union funding for this work is at the level of 5M euro, with another 5M euro in matching from the project partners.   As highways are becoming increasingly crowded in Europe, with freight shipments increasing and little new road construction in sight, public funding is motivated by the smoother highway traffic flow and greater capacity that can be enabled with truck platoons.  Private fleet owners are expected to benefit in terms of significant fuel savings due to the close headway operations, with the potential for significant savings in labor costs in the far future, when trucks are actually operating in an unmanned 'follower' mode for regular commercial service.

Project Background

According to the project leaders, the joint European project PROMOTE-CHAUFFEUR 2 is the logical extension of the successful CHAUFFEUR 1 project, in which the electronic coupling of two trucks, the Electronic Tow-Bar application, was realized. Intensive discussions with freight forwarders and professional drivers and analysis of their requirements gave the motivation to conduct the CHAUFFEUR 2 project with the following goals:

·         CHAUFFEUR Assistant

Extension of the Electronic Tow-Bar system by interoperable system functions, that allow following of any other vehicle. CHAUFFEUR Assistant functions can be described as a combination of smart adaptive-cruise-control at short (but still safe) distance and vision based lane keeping.

·         Platooning

Extension of the Electronic Tow-Bar system to permit towing more than one vehicle and realisation of three truck platoon. In the Platooning application, only the leading vehicle is driven by a human driver; the towed vehicles are completely operated by a vehicle controller and follow the leading vehicle at a very close distance.

·         Horizontal support functions:

Human machine interface, system evaluation and safety concepts, scenario development and traffic simulations, concepts for freight logistics, cost/benefit analyses for the systems, user/customer acceptance, legal and liability implications.

Technical Goals and Horizontal Analyses

CHAUFFEUR has the following technical goals:

• develop inter-operable system functions that allow following of any other vehicle at a safe following distance and reduce drivers' workload;

• develop lane-keeping function for the trucks and obstacle detection and collision avoidance features;

• develop a suitable safety concept;

• realize truck platooning function;

• develop communication concept for platoon inter-vehicle communication;

• develop safety concept for platoon operation;

• demonstrate truck platoon on a test truck;

• demonstrate/evaluate system functions in a test truck environment and real life situations.

These main tasks are complemented by the following horizontal functions:

• further develop CHAUFFEUR Human-Machine Interfaces;

• perform system evaluation on theoretical and operational levels;

• develop scenarios and conduct traffic simulations;

• develop and evaluate concepts for CHAUFFEUR freight logistics;

• conduct cost/benefit analysis for CHAUFFEUR II functions;

• evaluate user/benefits and acceptance;

• investigate legal and liability issues.

A Balmy Day for Riding the Future

As a welcome offer of relief from the bright northern Italian sunshine, the invited guests were received under a rustic portico where posters provided detailed information on the various automation sub-systems within the trucks.  This was followed by a presentation session, in which European Commission project officer Fabrizio Minarini welcomed the guests and congratulated the project team.  After a series of technical presentations and a generous lunch, guests were invited to board shuttle buses to the test track nearby.

In all, five vehicles were equipped by the three OEM partners, DaimlerChrysler, IVECO, and Renault Trucks.  The project plan called for IVECO and Renault Trucks to deliver their own designs for the Chauffeur Assistant function, while DaimlerChrysler provided that function as well as platooning.  Therefore, IVECO and Renault Trucks each provided one vehicle, while DaimlerChrysler provided three.  

Significantly, one of the Daimler vehicles had been built “from the ground up” as a completely drive-by-wire vehicle, which project members said was a first.  Renault Trucks also integrated a steer-by-wire system.  Other automated vehicle control functions for the trucks were retrofitted with attached motors.

The first round of demonstrations featured trucks from each of the three manufacturers operating together in Chauffeur Assistant mode.  Of the string of three trucks, the trailing two vehicles each locked onto the vehicle ahead, at which time the driver released control of the vehicle to the electronic system.  For the passengers, everything seemed quite natural in terms of gap to the vehicle ahead and lane holding – the only unnatural phenomena was the driver’s passivity while the truck roared effortlessly ahead at highway speeds.

To challenge the systems, the lead truck performed maneuvers such as lane changes, swerving, and speed changes – all of which were aptly tracked by the followers.

There were performance differences among the vehicles.  Design teams were forced to trade-off between ride quality and accuracy of lane tracking, for instance.  So, in one case, steering was quite smooth, but the truck moved around in the lane a fair bit on the sharp curves of the test track.  In the other case, the tracking was rock solid but the ride a bit jerky.

Daimler Shows Off First-Ever 3-Truck Platooning

After several runs, in which attendees gleefully switched from truck to truck to give them the engineering once-over, all three Daimler trucks moved into position to demonstrate the platooning function.  Just above zero speed, the drivers in the following trucks confirmed machine control and sat back to be driven.  The trucks accelerated to highway speed as a unit.  In this case, the trucks entrained quite closely together (12 meters).  Again, a variety of maneuvers were performed.  The “shocker” occurred when the lead truck performed a hard braking action – and the guests in the following truck watched their vehicle respond instantly with equally hard braking to come to a safe stop.  Fortunately, passengers had been warned in advance, to avoid internal collisions of heads and knees with the cab interior....

Technological Basis

How does it all work?  The Chauffeur Assistant function relies on fairly standard radar-based Adaptive Cruise Control for sensing forward vehicles, with a camera mounted behind the windshield and video processing to detect the lane markers.  For platooning, inter-vehicle communications were added -- handy for those hard braking situations –  using Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum signal modulation at 5.8 GHz.  Also, the trucks stayed in close “lock” with one another due to a circular array of infrared lamps on the back of each truck, which the following truck monitored with an infrared camera.  This “pattern lock” approach was necessary to provide the accuracy required by close headway operations.

While still some ways from entering the commercial market, the CHAUFFEUR project has achieved a new level of capability in truck automation.  The Chauffeur Assistant can be seen as a relatively near-term offering, as truckers adopt mature Adaptive Cruise Control technology and marry that with new products in lane keeping assist.  Implementation of truck platoons, however, is expected to take quite some time – many experts believe that this type of trucking operation would only be allowed on dedicated truckways, which have not yet been constructed ... although studies are underway.

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For More Information ...

... contact CHAUFFEUR2 project manager Christophe Bonnet at christophe.bonnet@daimlerchrysler.com.

Also visit www.chauffeur2.net for additional info.

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