platooning
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'Platoons' of autonomous Freightliner trucks will drive across Oregon
Most of the self-driving truck attention has revolved around Tesla's much-teased reveal of its EV big rig next month and all the auto companies rushing to introduce their own electric models. But there's another autonomous truck-related race to develop tech and mechanisms to enable the safe travel of extensive convoys of these vehicles, known as 'platooning.' At the North American Commercial Vehicle Show this weekend, German automotive titan Daimler announced its trucks will engage in 'platooning' tests on highways in Oregon and Nevada.
Semi-autonomous truck convoys due to hit UK roads next year
Convoys of semi-autonomous trucks are expected to be tested on public roads in the UK before the end of next year, the government announced today. The Department for Transport and Highways England have rustled up £8.1 million in funding between them to pass on to the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), the independent organisation that'll conduct the trials. TRL will start with simulation studies and driver training before moving onto a test track and finally, public roads by the end of 2018.
Volvo's platooning SARTRE cars drive themselves, dabble in existentialism (video)
Tailgating on the highway is a pretty dangerous thing and, in some cases, can be a ticketable offense. In the future, though, it could be a way to ease traffic congestion and to boost fuel mileage on highways. In this guise it's called platooning, something that we saw GM's crazy futuristic EN-V doing when we took it for a spin out in Vegas. Volvo is getting in on the game too, participating in the European Safe Road Trains for the Environment Project, or SARTRE. It's a research program looking into a standard way to have "trains" of autonomous cars that can follow each other on the highway. A professional leads the way and other cars communicate with each other, enabling the drivers in those following cars to simply kick back and read the paper if they like. This is a project that could be seen on the road in as few as 10 years, but we're thinking by then people might need to find something else to read. %Gallery-114519%
