Volvo Group is joining ten partners in a newly started research project called AutoFreight to investigate using self-driving trucks to transport containers between the Gothenburg harbour and the inland city of Boras.
Improved transport efficiency using self-driving vehicles would not only benefit the companies using these carriers but also the society as a whole, due to a lower environmental impact and increased safety according to Volvo Group.
“The strength of this project is the broad spectrum of partners involved”, says Volvo Group project manager Emma Wermström.
“Efficient trucks alone are not enough to make a large societal impact,” she says
The Volvo Group contribution to the project is to perform research on automated, articulated heavy-duty trucks and defining the prerequisites for self-driving vehicles on the highway.
The vision is to allow for automated driving on the motorway segment of the stretch of road going between the harbour and Boras.
The driver will be at the wheel from the port to the highway but will allow the truck to drive on its own on the highway.
”During the project, the driver will always be the one driving the truck on the motorway. The self-driving functionality will, for safety reasons, only be validated at a test track”, says Wermström.
The Chalmers University of Technology will manage the validation of the self-driving truck on the test track and develop the algorithms needed for autonomous, articulated vehicles.
GDL is one of the haulier companies transporting containers between the harbour to Boras. As part of the project, it will operate a Volvo truck in the field, mounted with sensor equipment.
Data from the sensors show the vehicle environment as well as the driver behaviour and provide a basis for the development of the required algorithms for the self-driving functionality.
The city of Boras will investigate the possibility to open an inland port outside the city where container administration could relocate from the harbour. Due to administration, many containers today are detained in the Gothenburg port for a long time, hours or days.
The Swedish Transport Administration will investigate adaptions of the infrastructure that may be needed to allow self-driving trucks on the highway.
The project will run until 2020 with a budget of 4.9M Euros. Sweden’s innovation agency Vinnova funds half the budget and the partners in the project the other half.
