Mercedes-Benz Developing a Self-Driving Truck

 Self Driving Vehicles  

The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 study will be providing a visually exciting and technically feasible take on the long-distance truck "highway pilot" provides a glimpse of the future shape of trucks.

With several car makers developing autonomous driving technology and intending to start selling cars that can drive themselves within the next 15 years, it's becoming clear that the future of transport is self-driving cars. But, autonomous vehicles are not only going to change personal transport, they are bound to have an impact on commercial transport, as well. While the likes of Google, Nissan, Audi, Volvo, and BMW, are focusing on personal self-driving cars, Mercedes-Benz has been working on a semi-trailer truck that could drive autonomously, promising to make truck drivers' lives a lot easier.

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The German luxury car maker recently unveiled a self-driving 18-wheeler concept, dubbed the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025, meaning it should hit the road in ten years. In a blog post on the company's website, Mercedes-Benz said that autonomous driving “already possible at realistic speeds and in realistic motorway traffic situations”, and that "In ten years' time, trucks could be driving autonomously on motorways.” Mercedes also underlined that increased transport efficiency, improved traffic safety, and reduced carbon emissions and fuel consumption will be some of the benefits that self-driving trucks will bring.

The Future Truck 2025 is equipped with Mercedes' “Highway Pilot” system, which integrates several autonomous driving functions (such as blind spot technology), along with radar sensors and a 3D camera. The sensors and the camera monitor and scan the truck's surroundings up to 200 of it, so that it can be able to avoid pedestrians, various moving objects and hurdles on the road, and the wireless Internet connection allows it to communicate with other vehicles and with the infrastructure, so that it can share and receive information about road and weather conditions and potential road hazards. The vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication also allow the truck to share its location and moving speeds at all times.

However, unlike Google's self-driving car, this truck will not be able to navigate city streets, and it's autonomous driving system will only be usable when driving on the highway. This means that the driver will have to bring the truck to the highway and only activate the autonomous system after merging into traffic on the interstate. Once a driver gets onto the highway, they can give control of the vehicle over to the Highway Pilot system, which will move the truck at speeds of up to 53 mph. The truck's navigation system can detect if the vehicle needs to get off the interstate, based on the route preset by the driver, and alert the driver that he needs to take control. In case the driver doesn't take over the wheel, the autonomous system will activate the emergency brake and bring the vehicle to a stop.

The Future Truck 2025 is obviously just a prototype, and Mercedes-Benz will continue to develop the system in the following years, hoping to build a fully-autonomous truck that will be commercially available by 2025, and the whole trucking industry would benefit a lot from such a vehicle, as it will help reduce trucking companies' operating costs, and make the truck driver job look much easier, which should help the industry avoid driver shortages in the future.

By Jordan Perch

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Author Bio - Frequent 33rd Square contributor Jordan Perch is an automotive fanatic and “safe driving” specialist. He is a writer for DMV.com, which is a collaborative community designed to help ease the stress and annoyance of “dealing with the DMV.”