Scania tests autonomous lane-changing

SCANIA HAS CARRIED OUT A TEST OF A SELFdriving truck,which saw it safely change lanes in traffic – totally autonomously.

In a re-created motorway scenario at a test track, the driverless truck successfully negotiated the lane change, working its own way around two unconnected, manned cars.

The Scania was using a new system which combines Galileo GPS navigation, an onboard camera, front and side radar and other positioning and sensor technologies – together capable of producing precise positioning – and what Scania terms “collaborative perception data.”

Scania and six other partners developed the system in their Precise and Robust Positioning for Automated Road Transports (ProPART) project.

The demo proved that the system can pinpoint the position of the truck with 10cm accuracy. That combines with the highly accurate representation of the truck’s surrounding environment, using data from the truck’s systems, plus roadside radar units.

Usually, autonomous vehicles rely on their own sensors to interpret and process data on the surrounding environment, but this system adds infrastructure-to-vehicle communications.

Scania says that if vehicles also shared information, “you can extend their horizon and benefit from data from another vehicle to also look around the corner and thereby gather more data as a basis for manoeuvring decisions.”

Scania cautions that real-life traffic situations “tend to be more dynamic and unstructured,” with “many more vehicle and system characteristics and possible sources of errors that need to be handled.”