Automated and connected road vehicles enable large-scale control and optimisation of the transport system with the potential to radically improve energy efficiency, decrease the environmental footprint, and enhance safety. Freight transportation accounts for a significant amount of all energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In this talk, we will discuss the potential future of road goods transportation and how it can be made more robust and efficient, from the automation of individual long-haulage trucks to the optimization of fleet management and logistics. Such an integrated transport system can benefit from having trucks travelling together in vehicle platoons. In addition, by automating the driving, it is possible to change driver regulations and thereby increase the efficiency even more. Control and optimization problems on various level of this transportation system will be presented. It will be argued that a system architecture utilising vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication enable robust and safe control of individual trucks as well as optimised vehicle fleet collaborations and new market opportunities. Furthermore, feedback control of individual platoons utilising the cellular communication infrastructure can be used to improve traffic flow by reducing traffic density variations. Extensive experiments done on European highways will illustrate system performance and safety requirements. The presentation will be based on joint work over the last ten years with collaborators at KTH and at the truck manufacturers Scania and Volvo.
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