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Truck platooning includes driving of two or more trucks in a convoy by using connectivity technologies and driver support systems in order to make the platoon, the convoy, behave as one connected system. The advantages with platooning are for example a more safe and efficient transport system. The project’s vision is to speed up the implementation of platoon driving in Europe since all brands can form a platoon with each other and therefore contribute to improvements in traffic safety, traffic flow and fuel economy.

The project will not only look into technology development, but also aligning and working on for example standardization. In focus is the implementation of platooning as a support system and to demonstrating differently branded trucks in one platoon under real world traffic conditions and across national borders. The impacts on traffic safety, traffic flow and fuel economy is also a deliverable that will be assessed.

Truck drivers in and out of the loop
Two platooning levels will be investigated in the projects; platooning as a support function as well as platooning as an autonomous function. In platooning as a support function the drivers is still fully responsible for the driving task whereas for the automated function it is only the driver in the first truck that is responsible for the driving task. In the following trucks the drivers are “out of the loop”. Some of the use cases that will be demonstrated are platoon formation, join from behind / merge, steady state platooning, emergency braking, gap adaptation, cut in of other vehicle and leaving the platoon.
 

Expected impacts and benefits of ENSEMBLE
The expected outcomes from the project are contributions to shaping technology, regulation and public opinion towards autonomous vehicles. Safety will likely be increased since human errors in the following trucks will decreased. Also, improved traffic flow because of constant smaller following distance and development of standard communication protocol between all trucks on the road, easy to adopt for passenger cars is also a expected outcomes. An improvement in driver productivity can also be expected with platooning.

Complete value chain included in the project
ENSEMBLE is a three year EU project, ongoing between June 2018 and May 2021. The funding is 20 million EUR and 20 partners representing the complete value chain of the automotive sector is included in the project. The project is associated into SAFER's research area Systems for accident prevention and automated driving. The project will build knowledge to the SAFER platform about for example methodology to verify assisted and automated systems and also development of new perception components that enable reliable information about the vehicle.

This project is co-funded by the EU under the Horizon2020 (H2020° Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement No 769115). The content of this website reflects solely the views of its authors. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. The ENSEMBLE consortium members shall have no liability for damages of any kind that may result from the use of these materials.