Project

Substantial fuel consumption savings as well as less road footprint can be realized by driving trucks in platoons i.e. keep very short distances between each vehicle, below 10meters. The main focus of platooning is fuel saving but to reach this goal a number of safety challenges needs considered; the system needs to be safe in technical sense as well as handling challenges of the humans; drivers in the vehicles as well as drivers of the surrounding traffic. Drivers and other road users actions, reactions and interaction with the platoon and the long term behavioral effects on drivers needs to be studied. Within the project Volvo, Chalmers University and Kapsch aim to develop platooning functionalities and apply them on a pilot fleet consisting of 3 trucks with trailer to be tested in real traffic. The project have a 4 year duration spaning  December 2013 to the end of 2017.