An automated truck platoon for energy saving

This paper presents an automated truck platoon that has been developed under a national ITS project named Energy ITS. The project, started in 2008, aims at energy saving and global warming prevention with ITS technologies. A platoon of 3 fully-automated trucks currently drives at 80 km/h with the gap of 10 m on a test truck and along an expressway before public use, under not only steady state driving but also lane changing. The lateral control is based on the lane marker detection by the computer vision, and the longitudinal control is based on the gap measurement by 76 GHz radar and lidar in addition to the inter-vehicle communications of 5.8 GHz DSRC. The radar and lidar also work as the obstacle detection. The feature of the technologies is the high reliability, aiming at the near future introduction. Fuel consumption measurement on a test track and along an expressway shows that the fuel can be saved by about 14 %. The evaluation simulation shows that the effectiveness of the platooning with the gap of 10 m when the 40 % penetration in heavy trucks is 2.1 % reduction of CO₂ along an expressway. The introduction scenario is also discussed.

I. Introduction

ccording to the statement by the Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February, 2007, the global warming has been caused, and it is resulting from greenhouse gases, most of which is CO₂. Since then, ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems)-related projects focusing on energy and environment in addition to safety have been started in the world, and one of the projects is “Energy ITS” project initiated by Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2008 [1]. The project has two themes: an automated truck platoon and an evaluation method of effectiveness of ITS on energy saving, and this paper describes the automated truck platoon.