If you drive on I-70 between Columbus and Indianapolis, you might encounter a semi-truck that's remotely controlled by the truck in front of it. It’s part of the automated truck project by the departments of transportation for Ohio and Indiana.
WYSO’s Mike Frazier spoke with Breanna Badanes, spokesperson for Drive Ohio, a division of ODOT that explores using technology to improve transportation. She explains why the automated technology is being studied along I-70 in Ohio and Indiana.
This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
Breanna Badanes: I-70 is a pretty critical freight corridor in the Midwest, but a lot of the testing that's been done for automated vehicles and automated trucking in particular has been done in southern climates where the weather is a little bit warmer, and more predictable. So this project is really focused on seeing how this automation technology performs in the Midwestern climate and how we might be able to maximize safety benefits on the roadway in our area.
Mike Frazier: So how does it work exactly? How are you testing this out?
Badanes: The first truck will control the direction and the speed, and it has a GPS antenna that submits its position data to the following truck, and then the following truck automatically takes that precise path so they're connected via technology, and we will have a driver in both trucks throughout the deployment. But the first truck really controls that movement and then the second truck automatically follows.
Frazier: So the truck in the back is automated when everything is going on the straight and narrow, except for if the truck needs to slow down for traffic or then accelerate back up the speed. Is that correct?
Badanes: Yeah, the trucks can accelerate and decelerate, and that second truck will match those speeds. But when we're exiting a highway or in a situation like going through a construction zone, any time that there might be something unexpected, we're not going to engage the technology.
If a vehicle or an animal or object were to move in between the two trucks, that second truck will see that object and slow down to match the speed of the object in front of it.
The trucks will be on the road for a year. So we will see them through a winter season, which was important for us to collect information on how this technology performs in adverse weather conditions — snow, ice, rain. Ohio and Indiana, we get all four seasons of weather, which is really a critical reason we're doing this project to begin with, is to be able to scale this technology in this area. We first have to understand if there are limitations and how we might address those limitations if we want to scale this in the future.
Frazier: Now the truck in the back following the lead truck, what is the driver doing when the automation is engaged? Are his hands on the wheel? Are they on their phone? What exactly are they doing?
Badanes: The driver in the second truck is still going to be in the driver seat behind the wheel. The wheel is turning on its own. The acceleration and the braking is happening automatically, so the responsibility of the second driver is really to just stay focused on the surrounding environment so that if anything were to happen unexpectedly, the environment changes or the technology doesn't perform as expected, they're ready to apply the brake, turn off the technology and take over manually.
Frazier: Do the trucks continue to stay in automation mode or do they turn it off if the weather gets really bad?
Badanes: The plan is if we run into adverse weather, the technology remains engaged, but our drivers are going to be extra alert at their surrounding environment and making sure that the technology continues to function as anticipated. If it's not, obviously our drivers are going to disengage so that we remain safe on the roadway. But we're really looking at what those limitations might be so that we could address those to really deliver the same safety benefits the automated vehicles offer. We want to be able to offer those to residents in the Midwest.
Frazier: Are there any concerns about truckers losing their jobs because of this automation technology that could happen in the future?
Badanes: That's a fair question. It's a question we've gotten when we talk about this technology. I think my answer is there's always going to be a need for truck drivers. As a state DOT, we have planners that estimate traffic for years to come, and our estimators see that freight traffic is increasing across the U.S. It is supposed to increase 50% in the next 25 years, so I think the need for truck drivers is only going to continue to increase.
But what this project and this technology in particular really comes down to is safety. We text while driving. Sometimes we see some drivers that are tired, so they're falling asleep at the wheel. There's impaired driving. So if we can eliminate a lot of those dangerous driving behaviors, we're going to make roadways safer for everybody. So the technology really comes down to safety. And then followed by safety is increased efficiency and reduced driver stress.
