Let’s take a look at another automatic driving related keyword, platooning technology.

What changes will automatic driving commercialization bring about onto our lives? Automatic driving is a much-anticipated technology in that it will reduce large scale accidents and provide new values to the drivers. Today we will focus on the changes it will bring to the distribution industry.

Why we are paying attention to automatic driving-based platooning.

Automobile system composition for platooning

Recently the distribution industry around the world is trying to solve two issues: ‘high rate of traffic accidents’ and ‘increasing fuel efficiency to reduce environment pollution’.

According to the National Police Agency’s traffic accident statistics, freight car accidents take 10.8% among all traffic accidents, which is the second highest percentage after sedans (53.0%). The rate of mortality accident among all traffic accidents accounts for only 1.9%, but freight car accidents are up to 3.7%. Freight truck drivers cause more and more accidents as year passes due to sleep driving. According to the Korea Transport Institute, as of 2017 the average age of freight car drives is above 50 years old, which shows a clear aging phenomenon.

Also, when the environment agreement Kyoto Protocol, in which Korea is involved in, expires in 2020, the Paris Accord will take its place. According to the Paris Accord, 195 countries in the agreement will be obligated to reduce their greenhouse gases. Korea is to reduce its greenhouse gas by 37% until 2030 and reduce 24.6% in transportation.

The distribution industry has been focusing on ‘automatic driving-based platooning’ to solve this problem. If you think ‘platooning’, the image of cars spaced like a train and driving in a linear manner may come to mind. The core of automatic driving-based platooning is to have each car share the location, direction, speed and other specific information of the truck through the vehicle specified Wi-Fi and GPS, camera, sensor, etc.

Vehicle system composition required for platooning

Automatic driving-based platooning technology enhances the competitiveness of a transportation system. Firstly, the fuel efficiency goes up. According to an ATRI (American Transportation Research Institute) research, the leader car of the platooning can expect maximum 5%, and the following cars maximum 15% of fuel consumption reduction. As the leading car blocks the wind, it will reduce the necessary energy consumption required for the following cars’ driving.

It also enhances the level of safety. Platooning utilizes V2X (Vehicle to Everything) technology so that the front and back cars share car control information such as speeding and reducing of speed, etc., while also sharing information collected by various sensors of the car in real time. If the car in front hits a sudden brake or an emergency situation takes place, it shows a quicker brake time than that of humans, allowing a quicker reaction.

Global businesses are focusing on platooning.

Platooning is being recognized as one of the next generation automatic driving technologies.

Many companies around the world have been trying hard since long to acquire automatic driving-based platooning technology. In Europe, there was the 2016 European Truck Platooning Challenge. Europe Truck Platooning Challenge included 6 companies from Netherland’s DAF, Germany’s Daimler and MAN, Italy’s Iveco, Sweden’s Scania and Volvo and had each manufacturer’s truck implement platooning technology to drive across the European continent. The purpose was to set up an environment for the mutual exchange of technology through competition.

In 2018, Japan realized platooning by using various brands of trucks on a highway for the first time in the world. The Japanese government is supporting the realization of platooning on roads between Tokyo and Osaka by 2022 which will be a government scope technology development result.

In case of China, there’s a great concern about advanced distribution due to its vast land. Around end of May in 2018, A distribution company (Suning Logistics) in Suning, China, completed the test drive on the automatic driving heavy equipment truck, Strolling Dragon, in Shanghai. It’s expected that the further development of platooning technology will have quite an impact onto China’s distribution and commerce fields.

Korea is also trying hard to commercialize automatic driving-based platooning. In May 2018, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport began its empirical study to develop automatic driving buses and freight cars and implement them onto the transport service. They announced that they would invest about 13.6 billion KRW into one of the research tasks, the 'V2X-based freight car platooning operation technology development'.

In November, Hyundai successfully demonstrated platooning technology.

Hyundai is also keeping pace and is investing in the automatic driving-based platooning technology. In November 2019, it demonstrated a large truck platooning on Korea’s highway. It successfully demonstrated the platooning position, reaction to other cars cutting in or getting out, simultaneous emergency brake between platooning cars, communication technology between platooning cars, etc.

Platooning leads automatic driving technologies.

Platooning, in a wider sense, is based on automatic driving technologies. In other words, once you fall behind the platooning technology, you may lose the lead in automatic driving technologies. This is why a government level interest and investment are needed in this, not just as a fuel efficiency increasing technology but as a technology that supplements a next generation automatic driving system. Let’s hope for a swift technology investment and wholehearted support for us to lead platooning technology.

Written by. Joon-hong Min (Connecting Lab)