Last word

Richard Cuerden, director of the TRL Academy, on why the transportation consultancy is a key player in delivering game-changing mobility breakthroughs… such as truck platooning

How do you ensure that the Academy continues to be at the forefront of advanced transportation innovation?

There are a multitude of functions that I administer, but in my role, there are three which take priority. The first is to ensure the organization is ‘match-fit’. In other words, I making sure our staff have the relevant skills and experience and fit into a collaborative multidisciplinary environment. Part of the Academy’s role is to nurture talent so our people can fully realize their potential. Secondly, it is imperative that we invest our annual research budget strategically into real-world projects where our skills and experience can make a difference. Thirdly, like all research laboratories, from an accountability and governance perspective, we have a responsibility to the client to provide and maintain a regime of rigorous and exacting quality controls testing, and one of my tasks is to oversee the technical review process.

Having been commissioned by the DfT and Highways England to carry out the first real-world truck platooning trials in the UK, can you explain how communications technology is used to connect the vehicles?

The project team is using wi-fi, but not the type of you and I might associate with our homes. Instead it is a bespoke industrial version, with additional cybersecurity. It has been developed to function seamlessly, providing a local network around the platoon when the vehicles are in the convoy, and when they couple or decouple. But what really makes it stand out is its ability to multichannel, meaning that it will always be possible to establish a ‘strong’ wi-fi signal between the vehicles, regardless of weather conditions and in remote geographies – it can operate with poor mobile network signals or where they are non-existent.

TRL’s main commercial partners are DAF Trucks, Ricardo (a UK engineering consultancy) and DHL. What are their roles?

DAF will be supplying custom-made right-hand drive versions of their market-leading commercial trucks for use in the trial and will be working closely with Ricardo utilizing their specialist engineering knowledge to modify and adapt these trucks to work with the state-of-the-art technology required for the platooning trials. Both companies bring with them a wealth of knowledge and practical experience gained from the European Platooning Challenge and Ricardo also worked with us closely on the development of the initial HGV Platooning feasibility study in 2014. DHL are our commercial partner and their support is essential in providing the ‘real-world’ aspect to this trial. We will not only be demonstrating platooning technology but using it day-to-day, embedded in the logistics of DHL’s freight deliveries.

Some have raised concerns that the technology could lead to truck drivers being made obsolete. Are these fears justified?

I certainly don’t see platooning impacting negatively on driver’s prospects in the short to mid-term. You will always need a driver at the wheel for security reasons. Secondly, platooning will only work on A-roads and motorway networks, meaning drivers will still be required to manually operate their vehicles on local road networks, which are the origin and destination points of each delivery run. Thirdly, drivers have an encyclopedic knowledge of freight logistics and supply chain operations, which machine learning and AI systems simply cannot match, at present. Personally, I see platooning as a technology that will work alongside drivers and assist them in their role rather than replacing them. They will become more like pilots, in that they will take on a very active role at the beginning and at the end of a journey, with the ability to switch their vehicles to an autopilot setting on motorways. n