Self-Driving Vehicles May Need No Drivers, But They Would Still Need This
As the famous American poet Mark Strand once said, “The future is always beginning now.”
IAA Mobility 2021, which was held just last week from September 6th to 12th in Munich, Germany was an event that made us imagine not just what the future of mobility would be like, but also how the future of our lives would look like shaped by it. As the biggest trends in the automotive industry have been for a while, “autonomous driving” and “sustainability” were some of the important keywords at the event as well. Hyundai Motor Group was one of the automobile companies to join in the promise for going green and announced its plan to go completely carbon-neutral by 2045, through continued investment in fuel cell technologies. Hyundai also recently held its own Hydrogen Wave forum, announcing many fascinating hydrogen-powered vehicle concepts including the fully autonomous Trailer Drone.
The Trailer Drone concept is a truck-like shipping vehicle that consists of a trailer sitting on e-Bogies, which are modular vehicles that can either run independently or together. The name was inspired by bogies. With platooning technology, it can keep just the right distance with other Trailer Drones, and can also share road information through V2X technology. Trailer Drone may be a concept for now, but it is something that could come to reality soon. And after all, it is a representation of what we think of future mobility that is already happening — autonomous driving vehicle with a connected car system that drives on alternative fuel. However, if such state-of-the-art trucks were to drive on highways with other vehicles, would it be possible to obtain the best travel efficiency with only their own functionality?
Of course, with platooning and V2X technologies, they would have no trouble running smoothly on the road, but just the ability to communicate with the nearby or even remote vehicles would not be enough to know the entire road situation.
These advanced technologies, just like any other technology, would only be truly meaningful when they fully serve their ultimate purpose — which, in the case of trailer trucks, is getting shipped items safely on time to destination without human drivers having to take the burden of long driving hours and navigating through congested highways. This objective can be reached by being provided with the accurate estimated time of arrival (ETA) and the best route for the destination. Without collection of real-time traffic data on road situations that involve a lot of complex factors, this is impossible.
Lane traffic information, in specific, would be significant especially for self-driving trucks. Truck-only lanes have different road situations and distinct road pattern speed compared to other lanes without trucks, so knowing just the overall road traffic information wouldn’t be enough for getting the accurate ETA. Autonomous driving trucks in countries like South Korea semi-trailer trucks run on the same lane with other smaller types of vehicles, would also require lane traffic information to get the best route navigation.
The future of automobiles is already beginning now, and the times of fully automated highway would eventually come someday, maybe even sooner than we might expect. But as cars and trucks continue to evolve, being equipped with traffic information system that can keep up with the changing roads would enable the true future mobility that we dream of.
