Removing complexity for AUTONOMOUS TRUCKS

Narrowing the operating domains for driverless commercial vehicles reduces the requirements of autonomous technology and speeds time to market.

Developers of driverless trucks are eliminating some of the complexity of automated driving in hope of hastening time to market. They are limiting the nearly immeasurable scope of circumstances - the operating design domain (ODD) - that face driverless vehicles by deploying a variant of platooning, or narrowing the operational parameters for transporting goods. Driver shortages, growth in shipments of online purchases and the never-ending push to trim costs are among the factors that have led many to predict that commercial trucking will be an early adopter of autonomy.

Several vehicle-system developers at the SAE COMVEC Technology Connection conference in Indianapolis detailed strategies that will help them get to market more quickly by reducing the requirements of autonomous technology.