Automated driving: The economic imperative

[vmq6695]

The story of the Google automated car was misleading. The real target has to be long distance trucking. From NHK in Japan:

Automated driving of truck convoy successful

An experiment to automatically drive a convoy of trucks has been carried out successfully in Japan. The technology is expected to help reduce transportation costs if it can be put to practical use.

The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, or NEDO, conducted the test. The public organization launched the project in 2008 to develop the next-generation trucking system.

In the test, 3 large trucks ran in tandem at 80 kilometers per hour, keeping a distance of 15 meters between them. All vehicles had drivers but the second and third ones were computer-controlled and operated automatically.

The operations carried out in the first truck, such as use of an accelerator, brake, and steering wheel, were transmitted wirelessly to the second and third vehicles.

The trucks had sensors that measured the distance from the preceding vehicle, as well as lane markings.

Vehicles are less affected by air resistance when they run after another one. The technology is expected to improve fuel efficiency by 15 percent if the distance between vehicles could be reduced to 4 meters.

NEDO says it hopes to improve the safety of its technology and put it into practical use in 10 years.

2010/11/07 11:19(JST)
(JST: UTC+9hrs.)

[team_v]

I don't think that running 3 big trucks 15m behind one-another at 80km/h is overly safe.
Definitely not at 4m.


Automation has the potential to reduce traffic congestion and accidents to near zero.
However the system has to be secure (no hacking) and we then have to consider the tax increases we would wear due to the lack of speeding fines and traffic infringement notices.


My main issue with traffic problems is the use of traffic lights everywhere when bridges/dips and marge lanes would have produced a better flow of traffic.