Trucks

A Reliable Direct Drive for the Steering Wheel Column of Buses

Eirea, Gabriel
Sanders, Seth
Zhang, Wei-Bin
2005

This final reports the fault analysis of precision docking system and safety design of the safety critical elements for precision docking system. The report includes three Parts, including:Part I provides a description of the Precision Docking System and reports analysis for fault diagnosis and safety design of automated steering controller and Electronic Control Unit (ECU) for steering actuator. It also reports a demonstration PATH conducted during the National Intelligent Vehicle Initiative demonstration organized by the US Department of Transportation Joint Program Office.Part II report...

Control of Heavy-Duty Trucks: Environmental and Fuel Economy Considerations

Zhang, Jianlong
Ioannou, Petros
2004

In this project we investigate the effect of heavy-duty trucks, equipped with different Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) systems, on the environment and traffic flow characteristics. The sluggish dynamics of trucks whether manual or ACC that is due to their limited acceleration capabilities filter speed disturbances caused by leading vehicles and lead to beneficial effects on the environment and traffic flow characteristics. This response however may lead to higher travel times in certain situations as well as invite cut-ins from neighboring lanes causing additional disturbances. A new ACC...

Development and Performance Evaluation of AVCSS Deployment Sequences to Advance from Today's Driving Environment to Full Automation

Shladover, Steven
VanderWerf, Joel
Miller, Mark A.
Kourjanskaia, Natalia
Krishnan, Hariharan
2001

This report presents the findings of its investigation into deployment sequences to better understand the paths that could be taken from today's driving environment to vehicle-highway automation. One of the most vexing problems has always been that of determining how to advance from the present-day manually-controlled vehicles to the future fully automated vehicles. Considerable research attention has been devoted to defining the architecture and operating protocols, as well as the technology, of automated highway systems. Rather less attention has been devoted to defining the steps by...

Parameter Estimation and Supervisory Techniques for Robust Longitudinal Control of Heavy Vehicles

Druzhinina, Maria
Moklegaard, Lasse
Stefanopoulou, Anna G.
2003

This report describes the development and experimental validation of a coordination scheme between friction and discretely variable compression brakes for a Class 8 Freightliner truck used as a development platform in the California PATH program. The coordination scheme that we developed maintains the speed tracking performance of the nominal PID controller which was originally designed by the UCLA team for the case of friction brakes only. Through the coordination scheme, the command of the nominal PID controller is split into a friction brake command and compression brake command. The...

Safety Performance and Robustness of Heavy Vehicle AVCS

Yih, Paul
Satyan, Krishna
Gerdes, J. Christian
2003

Commercial heavy vehicle research at the California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) program has focused on the development of controllers for partially to fully automated driving environments. Safe performance of Advanced Vehicle Control Systems (AVCS) must be demonstrated for a wide range of operating conditions and truck configurations to avoid any one of the many failure modes-such as rollover or jackknifing-common to articulated heavy vehicles. For this purpose, a multi-body dynamic model of a tractor semitrailer has been developed using a commercially available...

Evaluation of Bus and Truck Automation Operations Concepts

Tsao, H. S. Jacob
Zhang, Lan
Lin, Lin
Batni, Deepa
2004

Traffic congestion will continue to worsen and likely worsen at a faster rate than ever. People throughput and freight throughput have become critical issues for California and the rest of the nation. PATH has funded with approximately $125K a research project entitled "Evaluation of Bus and Truck Automation Scenarios" jointly proposed by Jan Botha (Principal Investigator) of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Jacob Tsao (Co-PI) of Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at San Jose State University. This report summarizes the major findings of the research...

Fuel Saving Achieved in the Field Test of Two Tandem Trucks

Browand, Fred
McArthur, John
Radovich, Charles
2004

The fuel consumption of two tandem trucks is recorded for truck spacings of 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 meters. The trucks are linked by means of an electronic control system, and are operated on an unused runway at Crows Landing, California. Fuel consumption data is averaged while traveling in both directions over the same central strip of runway to cancel the effect of runway slope and to partially cancel the effect of wind. The average fuel consumption saving to be achieved by tandem operation varies from about 11% at 3-4 meters spacing to about 8% at 8-10 meters spacing.

Command Modification Using Input Shaping for Automated Highway Systems with Heavy Trucks

Bae, Hong S.
Gerdes, J. Christian
2004

Automated vehicles require sufficiently accurate system models in order to achieve a desired level of closed-loop performance in, for example, automated highways systems or smart cruise control systems. Parameters of the models are one of the important factors that determine the accuracy of system modeling and, eventually, the overall performance of the closed-loop system. Current GPS sensing technology enables estimation of road grade and, consequently, simple treatment of parameter estimation from a static force balance. This work has demonstrated that road grade can be reliably...

Evaluation of Truck and Bus Automation Scenarios: Operations Cost Analysis

Botha, Jan
Day, Jennifer E.
Adibhatla, Nagabhargavi
2004

Automated bus and truck systems hold the potential to improve road safety by eliminating some human error, increase the vehicle throughput by allowing vehicle convoying to shorten headways, and reduce costs associated with infrastructure, user time, and drivers. In this study, an automated bus system (ABUS) was compared with more-conventional light rail and bus-on-dedicated-lane (BDL) alternatives. A cost comparison (excluding accident costs) was also made among an automated freight trucking system (AHS-Truck), a no-build base condition, and configurations involving the addition of a...

Communications And Positioning Systems In The Motor Carrier Industry

Scapinakis, Dimitris A.
Garrison, William L.
1991

Until recently, truck drivers and their dispatchers have relied on public telephones and voice radio systems to communicate with each other. Today, however, vendors are beginning to offer new technologies for determining the positions of trucks and communications to and from trucks. Eighteen systems and their implications for the industry and intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS) activities are reviewed in this paper. Some of the newer communications and/or positioning systems are in the proposal stage. Others are available with not yet fully developed capability or only in limited...