Wunderbar! Mercedes-Benz’s Future Truck 2025 drives itself

Daimler Trucks and Buses’ Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 has had its world premiere today. The truck is equipped with the intelligent Highway Pilot assistance system, which enables it to drive completely autonomously at speeds of up to 85kph. The truck used was an 18-tonner. The ‘2025’ moniker stands for the year by which the autonomous driving truck could see commercial launch.  

Daimler Trucks today demonstrated the vehicle on a trip along a section of the A14 autobahn near the city of Magdeburg, in which the Future Truck drove itself in completely realistic driving situations. The company demonstrated the technology in a 5km stretch of a newly constructed section of the autobahn, which is yet to open for public transport.

“The Future Truck 2025 is our response to the major challenges and opportunities associated with road freight transport in the future,” said Wolfgang Bernhard, member of Daimler’s Board of Management responsible for Daimler Trucks and Buses.

The many advantages offered by self-driving trucks are clear: the Future Truck 2025 leads to more efficiency and better safety and connectivity. This in turn results in a more sustainable transport system to the benefit of the economy, society and consumers. The focus is the connectivity of the truck with its complete environment. That starts with the driver and the hauler and includes the infrastructure and other traffic participants. “With the Future Truck 2025, Daimler Trucks is once again highlighting its pioneering role in innovative technologies and is opening up a new era in truck transport. We aim to be the number one manufacturer in this market of the future, which we believe will offer solid revenue and earnings potential,” added Bernhard.

The world premiere featured a demonstration of the truck’s technology in the presence of several hundred media representatives, government officials, businesspeople, capital-market analysts and investors. In addition, Daimler AG held a conference on the future of freight transport with the involvement of renowned industry experts. The goal of the event was to establish an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders about the conditions for transport in the future, in which self-driving trucks will play a major role.

“If the legislative framework for autonomous driving can be created quickly, the launch of the Highway Pilot is conceivable by the middle of the next decade,” Bernhard explained. “That’s why Daimler Trucks is committed to maintain a dialogue with government officials and authorities, and with all other parties affected by this development. We believe the chances of success are good, because autonomous driving combines the ability to achieve business and technology objectives with the creation of benefits for society and the environment.”

The solution for long-distance haulage

The Future Truck 2025 offers solutions based on Daimler’s extensive technological expertise. Mercedes-Benz is already the industry leader for driver assistance technology in trucks, having installed hundreds of thousands of proximity cruise control, automatic braking, stability control and lane-keeping assistance systems. Another new system known as ‘Predictive Powertrain Control’ uses information about road topography and route characteristics to adjust the operation of the drivetrain in order to maximise fuel economy.

Additional and improved assistance systems will follow in the coming years. These systems will communicate with one another and enable vehicles to operate without any driver intervention, especially on highways and major roads. The highly intelligent Highway Pilot is comparable to an autopilot system in an airplane, which is probably the most advanced form of autonomous mobility in existence today.

Optimally executed acceleration and braking phases will help to ensure a homogeneous flow of traffic and will reduce fuel consumption and emissions of the Future Truck 2025. Autonomous driving will also enable more precise transport scheduling. Moreover, trucks that communicate with each other can travel more closely together and therefore take up less road space. There would be fewer traffic jams and the associated costs would be reduced. Finally, the lower risk of accidents caused by human error would reduce insurance rates.

Autonomous driving: a new job profile for truckers

The Highway Pilot system will significantly upgrade the job profile of truck drivers. It will not only free them from having to perform monotonous tasks; it will also give them more time for tasks that were previously handled by office workers at shipping companies. In other words, it will be possible for truckers to advance to new positions as transport managers, making truck driving a more attractive profession. Autonomous driving could thus help to resolve the shortage of truck drivers.

Along with numerous new components, the Future Truck 2025 also includes tried- and-tested systems that are already in use, in passenger cars for example. In this regard, Daimler has once again demonstrated its ability to efficiently transfer technology within the Group. With Highway Pilot, Daimler Trucks is now the world’s first truck manufacturer with plans to develop an autonomous driving system for use in production vehicles.

‘Highway Pilot’ activated-tech takes the wheel

After starting off, the display in the instrument cluster lights up immediately: ‘Highway Pilot available’. Using the installed map and the markings on the 3.5-metre-wide motorway lane, the technology of the Future Truck 2025 has identified the vehicle's position on the A14 autobahn near Magdeburg.

The driver switches the system on, then takes his hands off the wheel – the display confirms with ‘Highway Pilot active’. Nothing exciting happens as the revolutionary mode change takes place. The semitrailer combination continues to travel at exactly the set speed, in the centre of the right-hand lane. Using the truck's intelligent sensors and computing power, the steering carries out slight corrections by itself. The first impression: autonomous driving is amazingly unspectacular.

The driver wants to relax in comfort, so he presses a button on the seat armrest: the driver's seat immediately moves backwards, and pivots to the right by 45 degrees for a comfortable seating position. The driver is able to stretch his legs in comfort, as if sitting in an armchair at home. He is able to reach the steering wheel, but the brake pedal only by an artistic foot contortion. The Highway Pilot is now doing the driving.

The Highway Pilot is a combination of radar sensors at the front and sides, a stereo camera behind the windscreen, precise three-dimensional maps and V2V/V2I communication – which stands for Vehicle to Vehicle and Vehicle to Infrastructure – the exchange of information between the truck and other vehicles, and with the world outside the motorway.

In the Future Truck 2025, instead of a conventional instrument cluster it has high-resolution, graphic colour display. On the left the display shows the fuel and AdBlue levels, as well as the engine speed, and on the right the driving time and social data. In the centre it shows the vehicle speed in precise digital form, and also in analogue form using a stylised dial instrument.

When the Highway Pilot is activated, the information in the display is reduced to a minimum and all the data now appear on the screen of the tablet computer in the centre console. This is now the truck's central control and communication instrument. The developers now no longer refer to the interface between the driver and truck as ‘instruments’, but as the Human Machine Interface or Human Machine Interaction, or HMI for short. This is the centrepiece of the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025, and is presently still a disguised, near-series study.

The semitrailer combination of the future is now moving smoothly with the traffic at a cruising speed of 85kph, always keeping the correct safety distance of 60 metres from the vehicle ahead and staying precisely on course. The initial apprehension in the cockpit has now been allayed. Likewise the temptation to keep a constant eye on the traffic situation, so as to intervene at any time. This is not necessary. Even gusting cross-winds do not bring the truck off-track – the technology corrects its course more rapidly and safely than any human driver. The driver might now decide to compose an email or listen to music.

Or attend to more important matters. For example use the tablet to acknowledge an assignment that has just come in by V2I communication, or take a look at the proposed route in navigation mode and choose a suitable service station for the next break. The menu for the day promptly appears on the screen. So the driver can take the opportunity to pre-order the meal of his choice and reserve a parking space. Are there any friends or colleagues logged-in on the same route? Easy to find out, perhaps they can arrange to meet up for the next rest break.

The traffic of tomorrow will likewise have its share of unforeseen incidents and breakdowns, occasionally slow down and come to a stop, but the Future Truck 2025 smoothly adapts to the conditions. A message appears in the display: ‘Emergency vehicle approaching’. The information comes from a police car, by V2V communication. The communication between vehicles works perfectly, the truck automatically moves over to the right until it reaches the lane marking, clears the way for the fast-moving police car and then returns to the centre of its lane.

Meanwhile the driver remains in his working position and merely observes the scene. And uses Skype to answer an enquiry from a colleague travelling well behind about the cause of the delay. Because the Highway Pilot is able to announce a broken-down vehicle ahead in advance. It is stationary on the emergency lane, so the truck automatically moves left to the centreline and passes the broken-down vehicle while keeping a safety distance, as it also has its eye on the traffic in the left lane. After passing the obstacle, the truck returns to the right-hand lane and accelerates back to its cruising speed.

Minutes later the display reports a slow-moving vehicle ahead. In autonomous mode the Future Truck 2025 would patiently follow the slow-mover, as it never leaves its lane. But in this case overtaking is worthwhile, owing to the large difference in speeds. So the driver pivots the seat into the driving position, takes over manual control, indicates and changes lane to overtake. Returning to his lane, he can then hand control back to the Highway Pilot. Notably, the driver of the autonomous truck is always in full control, and can always override the technology by steering, braking or accelerating as required.