MAN took “important step”
Driverless trucks set to conquer the Autobahn soon

03/29/2022 12:33 pm

Truck Maker Man wants to make it all possible with his new truck: fewer accidents, less traffic jams and more usage. And all without a driver. An autonomous vehicle should also only have benefits for the environment.

Truck maker MAN, along with supplier groups Bosch, Leoni and Knorr-Brems, wants to drive trucks autonomously on motorways by the middle of the decade. Together with other partners, they want to develop a truck that can move back and forth between logistics hubs without a driver. “With the project, a concept for operating automated trucks on the Autobahn that can be transferred to industrialization should be available by the middle of the decade,” he announced in Munich.

With autonomous driving, there should be fewer accidents and fewer traffic jams in the future. In addition, it aims to combat driver shortages, increase the flexibility of truck usage, and reduce diesel consumption and CO2 emissions. The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security is there to ensure that trucks are safe from cyber attacks.

The Technical Universities of Munich and Braunschweig, TÜV SÜD, the companies Fernride and BTC Embedded Systems and Autobahn GmbH are also involved in the research and development project “Automated transport between logistics centers on the expressway at level 4” (Atlas-L4). It is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics. The project is “an important step on the path to hub-to-hub automation, with which we are already seeing a series of future applications for Logistics 4.0,” said MAN Board Member Development Frederick Zohm.