A Dutch scientific organisation works together with 13 partners to create a tool for connecting trucks into pairs. According to the creators of the platooning project it will make transport greener, more efficient, faster and safer.
According to TNO (The Dutch Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) „platooning”, i.e. integrated convoy of trucks in which one vehicle is automatically following the other paves the road for better transport. The technology developed by scientists is to be available on the market in 2020.
What exactly is the Truck Platoon Matching?
The goal of the Truck Platoon Matching project is to create a tool which will connect trucks and thus create convoys.
For this solution to properly fulfil its function, the vehicles have to be equipped with the necessary equipment which will allow them to locate each other. What is more, the program has to verify whether the pairing is actually beneficial. „If one truck has to go in a different direction than the other, the convoy doesn’t make any sense” – says the official TNO website.
The system will use the information about the working time of drivers, end points, vehicle specification and their tonnage. This way, you can match right trucks – in advance or in real time. In the first case the information on planned shipments will have to be made public by the carriers. In the second, the system checks the parameters of nearby trucks.
What do you think about this solution? Will it prove useful or is it another idea of scientists divorced from the reality of transport industry?