A paper abstract involving project partners HAN University of Applied Sciences and V-tron, entitled “Automated docking of tractor semitrailer with driver in the loop via 5G teleoperation” has been accepted for the 17th International Symposium on Heavy Vehicle Transport & Technology (HVTT17).
The envisioned publication is to be based on the research conducted by the aforementioned partners – you can have a glimpse at the testing conducted, in the video section of the website – which also involved 5G-Blueprint partner Roboauto.
HVTT17 will take place jointly with the 9th International Conference on Weigh-In-Motion (ICWIM9) on 6-10 November 2023 in Brisbane, Australia. The theme for the joint conference is Technology Convergence 2023 – Setting the Wheels in Motion: Reimagining the Future of Heavy Vehicles, Roads and Freight. The organisers encouraged authors to submit abstracts across a broad range of topics reflecting the rapid pace of change happening in the heavy vehicle and freight sectors.
Here below, the introduction to the submitted abstract:
The logistics sector is constantly looking for innovations that can help improve the service productivity level and profitability of the freight transport. These innovations have led to reduced fuel consumption and emissions in recent decades, and the automatization inside the warehouses, among other things. Yet, road transport sector in Europe nowadays faces new challenges such as dynamically growing shortage of drivers, unused road capacity during the night, wasted terminal time due to paperwork and poor digital insight into total incoming and outgoing traffic. Digitalization and enhanced telecommunication offer concrete options for improvement. Where fully autonomous transport is not yet feasible under all operational condition’s teleoperation can add to the next level in road transport.
In teleoperation, humans still monitor and operate the vehicles but from the distant control center, shown in Figure 1. To make this work, communication between vehicles and control centers needs to be fast, secure, widely available and reliable at all times, being exactly the promise of 5G network connectivity. This significantly changes the work of drivers while offering more comfort, but most of it makes it more efficient. Instead of waiting for cargo at terminal and adding avoidable costs an operator can take remotely switch control between several different vehicles. Moreover, additional automated functionalities can be accommodated by teleoperation such as Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) for Truck Platooning or Automated Docking of the vehicle combination when the operator has purely supervisory role. In this paper the latter functionality is presented, starting with functional architecture, controller design, integration, and testing on the scaled vehicle platform, and finally integration and testing of the full-scale pilot.