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As others embrace autonomous driving, SA faces dirty fuel, connectivity roadblocks

MIRRORCAM By replacing the rearview mirrors with an electronic mirror inside the vehicle, fuel use can be cut by up to 1.5%
SEEING EYE Blind spot monitoring detects pedestrians and cyclists in a truck’s blind spot when cornering

To watch a video in which Irma Venter takes a ride with Daimler truck test engineer Dirk Stranz in the Future Truck 2025, scan the barcode with your phone's QR reader, or go to Video Reports on www.engineeringnews.co.za. Video by Irma Venter.

MIRRORCAM By replacing the rearview mirrors with an electronic mirror inside the vehicle, fuel use can be cut by up to 1.5%

SEEING EYE Blind spot monitoring detects pedestrians and cyclists in a truck’s blind spot when cornering

31st July 2015

By: Irma Venter

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Daimler truck test engineer Dirk Stranz pushes one button and then retracts his hands from the steering wheel of the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025. “And now the truck is driving itself.”

It is unsettling to see the steering wheel move unaided as the truck gently turns the corner next to an airfield in Berlin, but Stranz’s presence creates some comfort that he can take over should the complex machinery fail.

Mercedes-Benz’s Highway Pilot allows a loaded heavy truck to drive itself along a stretch of highway at speeds of up to 80 km/h, with the driver there as a caretaker, in the driver’s seat, able to attend to other tasks.

The smart truck can follow road turns, as well as brake for traffic, for example, but not overtake, or take an on- or off-ramp.

It uses a combination of radar sensors at the front and sides of the truck, a stereo camera behind the windscreen, precise three-dimensional maps and vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.

It marries a multitude of the German vehicle maker’s technologies, already in use in Daimler’s trucks, such as lane assist and active braking assist, into a single package with a new purpose: to one day allow cars and trucks to drive themselves, and not only on highways, but also in cities.

The ultimate goal is accident-free driving.

German statistics show that 33% of all commercial vehicle accidents in the country in 2013 were rear-end collisions, says Daimler Trucks head of product engineering and global procurement Sven Ennerst. Lane departure accidents made up 28% of accidents, accidents at intersections 26% and 13% of accidents involved pedestrians.

Consider this: the kinetic energy of a 40 t truck travelling at 80 km/h is the same as a passenger car travelling 400 km/h.

Research by a German think-tank says that 50% of all accidents can be avoided through the use of driver assistance systems, adds Ennerst.

Active braking assist is one such system. It is now in its third generation, and is able to automatically bring a truck or bus to standstill when faced with stationary objects or cars, should the driver fail to do so.

In the next stage of development, the emergency braking system will be able to detect pedestrians and cyclists.

Daimler Trucks is also set to place blind-spot monitoring into series production soon. This system detects pedestrians and cyclists in a truck’s blind spot when cornering, with a flashing red triangle inside the cab telling the driver to stop immediately.

Lane assist is also set for further development. Today it gives visible and audible warnings when a truck is about to leave its lane. The next stage is that the truck will keep itself in the lane.

Predictive powertrain control is a cruise control system that generates an electronic horizon, which combines digital three- dimensional maps and GPS data to scan the road ahead. The system then adjusts speed while rolling or making gear changes when necessary to save the operator as much fuel as possible – up to 5% in long distance traffic.

The mirror cam is another interesting innovation. Instead of rearview mirrors, the Future Truck displays images from outside the vehicle, at all angles, onto monitors inside the cab, thereby increasing the driver’s visibility around the truck. The absence of rearview mirrors outside also reduces drag on the vehicle and can improve fuel consumption on highways by between 1% and 1.5%, says Daimler Trucks Future Truck project leader Georg Stefan Hagemann.

Accident-free, autonomous driving will also cut the costs of operating a fleet, he emphasises.

While truck drivers and fleet operators will feel the economic and safety benefits of autonomous driving, passenger car drivers will mostly benefit from the safety aspect, as well as the comfort of not having to steer through mind-numbing traffic, says Hagemann.

“I think it is a 50/50 chance whether autonomous driving will be socially accepted in passenger cars or trucks first.”

Highway Pilot is only a semi-autonomous driving system, as it only works on highways and not in cities. It is also not yet set for series production.

“First we need to test all the systems until we are 100% sure they will always work under all weather conditions. There also needs to be a change in the legal environment to allow autonomous driving. We think Highway Pilot can be available in ten years,” says Hagemann.

Following this, the next step is to make semiautonomous driving completely auto- nomous by taking it into the city, a far more complex and demanding environment.

Legal Framework
A number of vehicle makers are chomping at the bit to start autonomous driving trials, especially as global competition to be the pioneer in this field intensifies.

They are convinced autonomous driving is the key to safer roads.

Daimler Trucks and Buses CEO Dr Wolfgang Bernhard says active and passive safety systems in trucks have seen truck accidents with fatalities decline 60% in the European Union (EU) from 2000, while transport mileage has increased by 15%.

Daimler “is determined” to improve this further by bringing autonomous driving to the road, he adds. However, apart from still testing the systems necessary for autonomous driving, the company is also awaiting legislation to make self-driving trucks a reality.

“Politicians must make it possible for us to put autonomous trucks on the road soon.

“The goal should clearly be that Germany, the first country to have cars and trucks, is once again the first country with the next-generation cars and trucks. This must be the German government’s ambition, particularly with a view to even more active safety in road traffic.”

Daimler requires, for example, that the German government allow semiautonomous trucks on the road.

German Federal Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt has established the Automated Driving roundtable, intended to aid the development of regulations for this new technology.

While regulations and appropriate, safe vehicle technology are probably the most important starting points for autonomous driving, there are also other, almost imperceptible, blocks that must be put in place.

Autonomous driving requires clear lane markings, good-quality road surfaces and fast Internet speeds, allowing for real-time information exchange.

Cities full of vehicles driving themselves demand infallible vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle- to-everything (V2X) communication.

Imagine one truck telling another behind it that there has been an accident, and to use another route to its destination, while the vehicle involved in the accident triggers an automatic emergency call to a team of first-responders.

Imagine your vehicle patiently queuing past the accident while you catch up on your email.

This is the world the pioneers of autonomous driving envisage.

New Ecosystem
“There is indeed a new ecosystem developing around mobility,” says University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center (MTC) director Peter Sweatman. “Transportation challenges have broader implications and higher stakes than ever before.”

The new world of connected and automated vehicles can prevent crashes, where the driver is not impaired (by alcohol, for example) by up to 80%, says Sweatman.

“No other solution can do this.” And, adds Sweatman, not one traditional player “can do connected vehicles on its own”.

What if a car can, for example, tell another vehicle that its driver will jump the red light, and that it must stop to prevent injury? Or the car can simply stop the driver from jumping the light?

The US has 33 000 road fatalities every year.

MTC in July opened its Mcity autonomous vehicle test site. MTC is a public–private research and development centre, which aims to develop a commercially viable ecosystem of connected and automated vehicles.

Mcity is a 32-acre simulated urban and suburban environment – complete with fake building facades – with a network of intersections, streetlights, sidewalks and construction obstacles where autonomous vehicles and the infrastructure they require will be tested and evaluated.

Mcity must be viewed against the background of the US government in 2014 having issued an advance notice that it would start making rules to begin the implementation of V2V communications technology in the US.

This means vehicle makers will have to install these technologies in their vehicles not too far into the future.

Mcity adds to a project where Sweatman is also involved, namely the operation of 3 000 connected vehicles in Ann Arbour, where V2V, V2I and V2X systems are tested.

The names involved in the projects are not those traditionally associated with the automotive industry. Yes, there is General Motors, Toyota, Honda, Ford and Nissan, but there is also Cisco, Intel, Verizon, Google and Xerox – which already do 50% of their business in the transport industry.

Projects such as Mcity will consider everything around connected and automated vehicles, says Sweatman, such as consumer response, parking, cybersecurity, ownership of data and legal obligations and liability.

Key issues in deploying these projects are the infrastructure needed in terms of WiFi and fibre networks, as well as retrofitting vehicles with communication modules, says Sweatman.

He estimates that it will cost around $13-billion to equip the US with the infrastructure required to allow connected and automated vehicles on the road.

In South Africa, much of the road safety debate centres on the mantra of ‘speed kills’.

According to an international report, road fatalities per 100 000 inhabitants in South Africa were at 27.6 deaths in 2011, compared with North America at 10.4 or Australia at 5.6.

Data used by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) International Road Traffic and Accident Database show that South Africa’s death toll in 2011 was 13 954.

However, Transport Minister Dipuo Peters inferred last year that South Africa’s road fatality data is not 100% correct by committing her department to creating a reliable statistical databank for road-related safety incidents.

One of the failings of South Africa’s road death statistics is the reliance solely on the police to file unnatural deaths.

Road safety campaigners have called for government to look beyond police records of fatalities as these are not always reliable, owing to underreporting. They want government to include statistics from hospitals and mortuaries.

Another shortcoming in the country’s road safety statistics is that they measure fatal crashes only. Other accidents or causes of accidents go unrecorded and unreported.

OECD statistics on fatal truck crashes in South Africa show nine fatal truck crashes per 100-million vehicle kilometres travelled in 2005.

In countries such as Switzerland, Canada, the US, Australia and France, this is less than two.

Tech Not Available in South Africa
A number of South African truck makers want to bring more connected, more advanced, safer vehicles to South Africa. However, this is not necessarily possible.

Daimler Trucks in July launched its newest OM 471 heavy truck engine in Europe, promising fuel savings of up to 3%.

This means that, on average, a Mercedes-Benz Actros doing duty in the EU, travelling around 130 000 km a year, will use 1 100 ℓ less diesel a year, also cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by around three tons. (Since 1965, Mercedes-Benz has cut fuel consumption on its trucks by around 60%. Any 10% saving in fuel use can add 3% to a fleet operator’s margin.)

This signifies substantial savings to operators, as fuel makes up around 29% of an operator’s total cost of ownership, says Mercedes-Benz Trucks head Stefan Buchner.

However, the EU works according to Euro VI fuel specifications. This refers to European emission standards, defining the acceptable limits for exhaust emissions of new vehicles sold in EU member States. Clean fuel plays an important role here, as cleaner fuel limits harmful exhaust emissions.

South Africa still runs on the equivalent of Euro II fuel standards, while government demands a carbon tax on all new vehicles sold emitting carbon dioxide above a threshold of 120 g/km.

The 2017 deadline for implementing the standards for new, cleaner fuel specifications has been delayed, in part because government and the oil refineries could not finalise a cost recovery mechanism to fund this programme.

The proposed 2017 upgrade to a Euro V-type specification level was being pursued under the so-called Clean Fuel 2 banner, with earlier cleaner fuels initiatives having raised fuel specifications levels to the Euro II-type level from 2008.

No new date has been set for Clean Fuel 2, South African Petroleum Industry Association executive director Avhapfani Tshifularo tells Engineering News. “Government has not decided on the new date, but we are talking and, hopefully, a date will be announced in due course.”

The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.

Daimler Trucks and Buses Southern Africa executive director Kobus van Zyl says his company is also not sure when legislation ensuring cleaner fuel for South Africa will be introduced.

“We are hoping that this will be as soon as possible.

Daimler Trucks & Buses has already introduced more efficient trucks in some of our markets internationally, so, as the local company, we are disappointed at the lack of progress towards the introduction of cleaner fuels, which will enable us to introduce these new products onto our local market.

“These new products will not only yield substantial customer benefits on total cost of ownership, but will also greatly assist in our country’s stated objective to reduce our carbon footprint.”

Bringing a semiautonomous truck, and the safety benefits it holds, to South Africa will require even a further leap, he adds.

“This would involve a significant upgrade in road signage and relevant information technology infrastructure,” says Van Zyl.

“But we believe that the introduction of currently available products, requiring nationally available lower sulphur fuel, will be a very good first step towards the eventual introduction of more advanced technology, such as our highway pilot technology, as seen in our Future Truck 2025.”

Gap Growing
While a brand-new automotive ecosystem is developing in Europe and the US, using connected and automated vehicles, the debate in countries such as South Africa, still centres on when cleaner fuel will become available, or whether the road accident statistics are indeed correct.

Partner this with slow Internet speeds – Germany has an average connection speed of 10.2 Mbps, while South Africa is at 3.4 Mbps, with the global average at 5 Mbps – poor lane markings and road signage on a number of roads, and it is likely that the technology gap between transport systems in South Africa and the developed world will continue to grow profoundly over the next few years.

Nationwide high-speed broadband is a requirement for Mobility 4.0, as Germany’s Dobrindt states, which is why Germany plans to invest “billions in broadband” in order to provide basic Internet services with a connection speed of at least 50 Mbps nationwide by 2018.

The technology gap is especially lamentable considering the improvements seen in road safety and efficiency over the last decade in Europe and the US through the use of driver-assistance systems, and envisaged through the roll-out of connected and automated vehicles in the future – improvements Transport Minister Peters, and the country, surely desperately desire.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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