Freightliner Inspiration truck receives autonomous vehicle licensing from Nevada DMV
06 May 2015
Nevada has granted the first license for an autonomous commercial truck—the Freightliner Inspiration—to operate on an open public highway in the United States to Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA). The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is equipped with the Highway Pilot sensors and computer hardware is based upon a series production Freightliner Cascadia Evolution, fully certified to meet all US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.
The Highway Pilot links together a set of camera technology and radar systems with lane stability, collision avoidance, speed control, braking, steering and other monitoring systems. This combination creates a NHTSA Level 3 autonomous vehicle operating system that can perform safely under a range of highway driving conditions. In total, two trucks with this equipment exist.
|
|
| Highway Pilot elements. Click to enlarge. |
Technology elements include:
Radar and Camera Systems. The radar unit in the center area of the Freightliner Inspiration Truck front bumper scans the road ahead at long and short range. The long-range radar, with a range of 820 feet (250 m) and scanning an 18-degree segment, looks far and narrow to see vehicles ahead. The short-range radar, with a range of 230 feet (70 m) and scanning a 130-degree segment, looks wider to see vehicles that might cut in front of the truck.
The front radar unit is the basis for the Active Cruise Control and Active Brake Assist available in the Detroit Assurance suite of safety systems on the series production Freightliner Cascadia Evolution.
The area ahead is scanned by a stereo camera located behind the Freightliner Inspiration Truck windscreen. The range of the camera is 328 feet (100 m), and it scans an area of 45-degrees horizontal by 27-degrees vertical. The camera recognizes lane markings and communicates to the Highway Pilot steering gear for autonomous lane guidance.
Adaptive Cruise Control Plus. The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is equipped with Adaptive Cruise Control PLUS (ACC+). ACC+ has the standard hardware and software used in series production vehicles such as the Mercedes-Benz Actros; however, it has modified software specific to the AV driving application. ACC+ combines the abilities of active cruise and distance control in combination with the ability of the vehicle to stop and go without driver intervention.
Level 3 autonomous vehicle capabilities enable the driver to cede full control of all safety-critical functions under certain traffic or environmental conditions. The autonomous vehicle system is responsible for maintaining legal speed, staying in the selected lane, keeping a safe braking distance from other vehicles, and slowing or stopping the vehicle based on traffic and road conditions. The vehicle monitors changes in conditions that require transition back to driver control when necessary in highway settings. The driver is in control of the vehicle for exiting the highway, on local roads and in docking for making deliveries.
Nevada was selected as the demonstration location because it is one of four states, plus the District of Columbia, with laws regulating autonomous vehicle operation. Nevada legislation passed in 2011 and 2013 regulates the testing and operation of autonomous vehicles.
The legislation includes commercial trucks and sets standards specifying the number of miles an autonomous vehicle must have been tested in certain conditions before it can be granted a license to be driven in Nevada. Daimler obtained a special permit from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to operate the Freightliner Inspiration Truck on public roads near Las Vegas after supplying state officials with detailed information on the safety systems in the truck and the training program for the drivers.
It can't come soon enough.
Here in the UK the roads are flooded with heavy trucks driven by Eastern Europeans with a tight schedule and dubious driving credentials.
A high proportions of fatalities involve an HGV:
'Lorries are involved in a increasing percentage of fatal traffic accidents on Britain's roads. New analysis has shown that last year HGVs were implicated in more than half of fatal motorway accidents and one-in-five fatal accidents on A-roads, continuing negative trends over the last five years.'
http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/media/21-10-2013-lorry-fatalities-research
Posted by: Davemart | 06 May 2015 at 04:41 AM
Nice to see that Daimler Trucks are at full speed developing autonomous trucks. The way I now see the development of self-driving vehicles is that we will get level III autonomous vehicles in most new vehicles sold during the next 5 years. The main benefit will be safety related. Far less accidents. The other benefit is that the driver can spend time doing other things and therefore it would become less tiring to drive. After 2020 I expect the first fully autonomos vehicles to appear. However, we may not see such vehicles autohrized for general public roads until 2025. After 2025 it will only take a few more years before all vehicles sold are fully autonomous. When the autonomous software is done it is done and the needed camera sensors and prossessors only cost pennies thanks to the global smartphone industry so it is a no brainer to outfit all vehicles with this tehnology. Expensive radars are not needed unless you want to be able to drive in compleate darkness and any kind of weather that humans can't drive in because of zero visibility. The main benefit of fully autonomos vehicles are economic. Ordering transport for people or goods using fully autonomous vehicles is going to be much cheaper without the expense for the driver. Such autonomous taxis are also going to compete with trains and airplaines. You could order an autonomous car with a bed and bathroom so you could do a 600 miles trip during the night when you sleep. This is going to take a toll on short distance air travel and train travel.
I imagine the first level IV trucks will be flat skatebords that can fit a standard 20 or 40 foot container. After a crain has placed the container on the autonomos skatebord a robotic arm shouts up containing the nessasary sensors for navigation and the board is on its way. It will be battery electric and for long distance transport the container will be shifted to another skateboard with fully charged batteries etc. It will require an infrastructure of container lifting craines both at wherehouses and along highways.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 06 May 2015 at 04:51 AM
Our mostly impolite improperly dressed city bus drivers cost an average of $128,000 CAN/year and I would like to see the day when they are replaced with autonomous drive e-buses.
I agree with Davemart that too many heavy truck drivers create more and more deadly accidents. The sooner they are replaced the better. The same can be said about our city bus drivers.
Henrik, electric long range heavy trucks are not for tomorrow, FC or ICE range extenders will be required.
Posted by: HarveyD | 06 May 2015 at 06:55 AM
Just found out that trucks that can on and off load containers by an onboard crane mechanisms are commonplace. So an infrastructure with independent off and on loading craines for containers on self-driving electric trucks is not nessasarily needed. However, the cost of deliving containers should be lower if there is such an infrastructure along highways and at the factories and werehouses that use containers for goods delivery.
Harvay fuel cell vehicles does not exist in real life and they will never reach commercial viability. They cannot offer anything that battery electric self-driving vehicles cannot do better and at less cost. You seem to miss my point that a selfdriving heavy duty truck does not need an expensive long-range battery. It needs a short-range highly durable (say litium titaniun battery) and the ability to automatically change cargo so that another and fully charged truch takes over and so on for long-distanse haul of containers.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 07 May 2015 at 12:06 AM
If trucks don't need a driver, it's no big deal that you Loose some time for recharging. A truck will still lose much less time recharging, than it loses now for sleeping. Also, trucks can drive 24/7, unlike today.
For most cargo, it's no issue that delivery is slowed by a few hours because of battery recharging time.
On the other hand, if cheap, efficient liquid fuel cells are developped (which is not unlikely), it could be a very attractive range extender, for which renewable liquid fuel can be stockpiled for years (unlike electricity of H2).
Posted by: Alain | 10 May 2015 at 07:59 AM
Piggy-back service with higher speed electrified trains would be the cheapest and fastest for long distance cargo.
New locomotives can operate 100% electric and/or as a diesel-electric unit.
Short range 100% electric tractors could move the cargo trailers in and out of rail shipping yards to final delivery and/or pick-up points.
Current low performance batteries are not yet suited for long ranch heavy trucks. Mexico to Canada trips would need too many recharges or battery pack changes or tractor/cargo changes.
Posted by: HarveyD | 10 May 2015 at 11:44 AM
@Alain, good point about saving driver sleeping time to be used instead for charging in an low cost short-range battery electric self-driving container hauling truck (flat skateboard). So a long-distance transport of, say, a container for 1000 miles could be done by 20 short-distance drives of 30 to 70 miles each lasting an average of 1 hour at 50 miles per hour stopping 20 times for recharging lasting 30 minutes each. Total time speand 30 hours on the same battery electric truck to go 1000 miles. A human driver in a long-range diesel truck could not have done it any faster. The electic truck would not cost much to produce because it has a small short range battery and no need for onboard off and onloading mechanism for the container.
Harwey you can only save pennies by locating that 50Gwh factory in a country with low labor cost as labor cost is less that 5% of the cost associated with the production in that factory. It produces 50GWh at 200 USD per kwh or 10 billion USD woth of battery packs per year. It employs 6000 people that will be paid 80k USD each in the USA or 480 million USD per year so 4.8% of total production value. Use a low income value and you may save a few percentage on those 4.8% in laber cost. The largest cost reductions is about vertical integrating and scale of prouction and process and product development not the labor cost which are unimportant in this type of production.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 10 May 2015 at 11:38 PM
@Henrik:
If labour cost is not important, why are most batteries manufactured in Asia (specially in China, S-Korea and by exception in Japan)?
The same can be said about Apple's (and so many others) products.
TESLA will have to move some of their EV production to Asia to improve their bottom line as did GM, VW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Ford etc etc.
TESLA is already looking for a second mega-factory in Asia to lower labor and transportation cost.
Posted by: HarveyD | 14 May 2015 at 11:51 AM
The cost to produce goods and energy is basically 100% labor cost because the basic materials/elements from the Earth crust, wind, biomass, Hydro, solar, geothermal etc are all basically free.
Mining, transformation, manufacturing together with energy, machines and buildings used are also 100% labor, at least until such times as humans are replaced by AI robots. Labor cost would then be replaced by robot cost.
Posted by: HarveyD | 18 May 2015 at 08:37 AM