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Platooning Takes to the Road

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Darcy Conlin

This featured article looks at Peloton Technology Inc., a Menlo Park, California-based automated vehicle technology company focused on developing a system to reduce fuel consumption and improve the safety of trucks by using advanced sensing and communications. The word “pelotón” is Spanish for platoon — and platooning of trucks is precisely what Peloton Technology intends to foster. Dr. Josh Switkes is the CEO of Peloton and holds a PhD from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering. After hearing Switkes speak at ITS CA in October, Driverless Transportation wanted to learn more about the company and what Peloton is doing within the industry.

Switkes of Peloton

Peloton has a team of 11 employees poised to rapidly growing as they work to develop their technology and deploy production systems in 2015. The company was formed in 2011 with the goal of creating a system that would allow pairs of trucks to share information on their braking and engine systems to help them travel more safely and save fuel. The team began conducting market research in 2011, building on many years of experience across the founding team. The four members of the founding team come from backgrounds in the automotive and truck industry, vehicle safety and dynamics, business development, public affairs and government. Switkes has been working on systems to make driving safer and more efficient for the last 12 years. After his PhD work at Stanford University on a vehicle control systems, including guaranteeing safety for lanekeeping assistance and steering wheel haptic feedback, Switkes developed production control systems for Volkswagen, Audi, and Tula Technology. Peloton’s Principal Scientist Chris Gerdes is also a Professor at Stanford and the Director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS). Prior to joining Stanford, Gerdes was the project leader for vehicle dynamics at the Vehicle Systems Technology Center of Daimler-Benz Research and Technology North America. In this role, he worked closely with Freightliner / Daimler Trucks North America. Peloton’s VP Product, Dave Lyons has decades of experience with Silicon Valley technology startups and worked for many years as a leader at IDEO. Among other work in the automotive space, Lyons was employee #12 at Tesla where he led the development of the Tesla Roadster. Steve Boyd, Peloton’s VP External Affairs, has over 20 years of experience in government, public affairs and business development, including serving as a White House assistant press secretary, a PBS Newshour reporter/producer and in business development for a range of technology companies. Peloton is funded by a mixture of angel investors and venture capital investors including Castrol innoVentures which is part of British Petroleum.

Platooning

The trucking industry handles about 70% of the freight in the US. This makes trucking a vital part of the US economy. Dr. Switkes noted there is a saying in the trucking industry that “If you bought it, a truck brought it.” To be clear, Peloton is not about either driverless or autonomous trucks. Drivers are an integral part of the Peloton System. The system simply augments driver performance and safety and leverages the cooperative potential between pairs of trucks.

How does the system work? It is geared for tractor-trailers operating on multi-lane divided highways and it’s important to note that even when the trucks are safely linked, both drivers continue to steer and the role of first driver isn’t much different from today. The system adds forward collision mitigation radar to each truck making individual trucks safer while on their own. Using vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications, these active safety systems are linked between pairs of trucks when they form up into a platoon. While out on the road, trucks that utilize the Peloton System will be notified by the Network Operation Center (NOC)[1]   that they are coming into range of each other and can link up. The NOC helps trucks find each other on the road by identifying platooning opportunities so if Peloton equipped trucks are within V2V range, one truck can slow down and one can speed up in order to rendezvous.

The NOC is an Internet based cloud service that each truck connects to via either a cellular or Wi-Fi link. The NOC is separate from the V2V communication and is used to make sure the trucks are platooning only when it is safe to do so. These trucks are connecting on interstates and major highways, not residential areas. The NOC can also remotely adjust the following distance of the platoon for weather, traffic or other road conditions. The Peloton System shares much more than just the braking information between the trucks. Additionally, engine torque, acceleration and speed data is shared. Most importantly, forward collision mitigation radar and other active safety system data is shared between each pair of trucks increasing safety when they are in platoon. So whether the front truck is slowing down due to braking, a hill, a tire blow-out, or upcoming slower traffic, the information is instantaneously shared allowing the rear truck to react smoothly and immediately.

The key safety benefit comes from this assurance that the rear truck will react through V2V communication at the same time as the front truck. This essentially guarantees simultaneous braking between the two trucks. In a best-case scenario where a driver is operating manually, human reaction time ranges from 1-2 seconds even for a good driver. Peloton guarantees that every single time, even if the driver is distracted or has trouble seeing (for example the sun is in their eyes or it’s foggy) the system will react dramatically faster than an attentive human driver would under normal conditions. While a 1-2 second reaction time may not seem like much, at high speeds it definitely can be the difference between having an accident or not.

The biggest and most frequent accidents within the trucking industry are caused by frontal collisions. The brakes on most heavy trucks don’t react quickly because they use air brakes. With air brakes, there’s what is called a “brake lag” from the time the brakes are applied to when the truck actually begins to slow down. The Peloton System virtually eliminates that lag in paired trucks by using the V2V communication to apply the brakes in the rear truck at virtually the same time they are applied in the front truck. Switkes said, “We are not reacting to the front truck slowing down, we are reacting to the front truck applying its brakes. That can be the difference between safely braking and having an accident. In many cases we are actually applying the brakes in the rear truck before the front truck has started to slow down, because we are reacting to the application of brakes, as opposed to the actual slowing down.”

Peloton also increases safety by enhancing drivers’ awareness of what’s going on around each of the connected vehicles. Video is sent between the two trucks. There is a forward facing camera on each truck and video is sent so the driver of the rear truck gets the view from the perspective of the front truck. Therefore the rear truck can see what’s ahead on the road such as cars coming in on the shoulder from an on ramp. There are screens within the trucks cab that show the driver these views, mounted similarly to a rear-view mirror. Additionally, the video feed that comes from a rear truck allows the front driver to get a view of his/her own truck from behind. This is extremely effective in showing blind spots. Blind spot accidents are another major type of accident for heavy trucks. Driving a 72-foot tractor-trailer makes it difficult to know if another vehicle is next to you. According to Switkes, the Peloton System will help prevent accidents caused by blind spots.

We mentioned the driver is still steering but what else do they need to know in order to operate their vehicle? Switkes underscores that driver training is a key part of the system. The first time the system is turned on it will show the driver what it feels like to be platooning at a far distance. Then it will demonstrate what it feels like to be closer and experience an automatic braking event, not a hard braking event. The goal is to make sure that the first time the brakes are applied automatically is not a safety critical situation. Peloton does not want any surprises for the driver. The training includes driving with the system so drivers get a strong understanding and feel for the system.

Besides the safety benefits that Peloton offers, dramatic fuel efficiency comes from the aerodynamics of bringing the trucks closer together. Within a typical trucking fleet, fuel is about 40% of the operating cost so when talk of saving fuel comes up, trucking companies do take note. Peloton worked with the North American Council for Freight Efficiency and the major trucking fleet CR England to test their system and measure fuel economy in November 2013. This independently validated study followed the industry standard SAE Type II testing procedures and showed 10% fuel savings on the rear truck and 4.5% on the front truck. The results of additional comprehensive track testing performed by the U.S. Department of Energy will be issued in the next few months. These levels of fuel savings are enormous given that a typical trucking company spends $80-$100 thousand a year on diesel fuel for each long-haul truck. It’s estimated that the average savings from platooning with the Peloton system will amount to approximately $6,500 per year for each typical long-haul truck.

The fact that the rear truck saves more on fuel would likely make every fleet want their trucks to always be in the rear position, unless the two trucks are owned by the same company. However, a key part of the Peloton System is that trucks are ordered based on weight and braking ability. If there is an emergency stop, Peloton wants to be assured that the truck with the longest stopping distance is in the front of the platoon. For a given pair of trucks, the truck with the best braking ability and shorter stopping distance will be in the rear — and will get the better aerodynamic fuel savings. So trucks with the best combination of relative weight and good brakes will get the rear following position — and better fuel savings. In the rare instance that the braking ability is identical, Peloton may allow switching order, but Switkes says that will be unusual. In most cases there will be some difference in braking ability and the trucks will be ordered appropriately. If two trucks within the same company are traveling together, the order obviously won’t matter since the savings is across the same company.

Peloton Technology plans to have initial deployment with fleets that can easily adjust to have multiple trucks together on the road. The general public may not notice that many corporate fleets already travel in groups on our highways. Fleets like UPS and FedEx roll out trucks from their hubs based on the timing of when they finish sorting packages. According to Switkes, “Some fleets are sending out multiple trucks every day and they have to tell the drivers to leave a couple of minutes apart so that they don’t get backed up together at a stop light before getting on the interstate. So fleets like this only need to change their operation by telling two trucks, instead of one, to leave every few minutes.” For those owner operators with just one truck, there is the incentive to buy trucks with better brakes to better ensure being in the preferred rear platooning position. Switkes told us that some of the OEMs are already talking about having special platooning equipped trucks with better brakes.

When will we see this in action? Peloton has already driven the system over 12,000 test miles across the west and southwest. Currently they are collecting and analyzing data in a ‘data pilot’ with the Tennessee-based fleet TCW. This pilot has sensors and cloud-based monitoring operating on two trucks that run close together, though not yet platooning, as they carry freight between Nashville and Memphis. This data pilot and others to follow soon will help inform fleets about the benefits of implementing platooning on major freight corridors and to demonstrate the system’s evolving telematics features. In Q1&2 2015, a series of major fleet pilots will get underway. The aim is to have full production systems ready for deployment by late 2015.

There are no obstacles at the federal level to inhibit Peloton from moving forward. NHTSA has no regulations that get in the way of platooning. However, at the state level, states have their own following distance (tailgating) laws and Switkes said there are some states where that law or related laws would seem to place limits on platooning. However, just as driving laws were not made with driverless operation in mind, following distance laws – some of which apply specifically for trucks – were not written when wirelessly-connected active safety systems were available. What Peloton has found is that states in the US understand the importance of trucking to their economy and are open to innovative ways to make their freight corridors safer and more efficient. Switkes says that they are working with the states that have limitations in their following distance laws to explain the issues at play and find solutions. The most important thing Switkes says on this is that “When we roll out our system on customer trucks, we will be absolutely sure that those trucks will NOT get pulled over for tailgating.”

The Peloton System will be offered as a usage-based managed service. Fleets will pay a one-time fee for System hardware and installation to equip trucks and then they will pay a per-mile fee when trucks are in platoon. A rapid payback period as quick as a few months is anticipated for typical long-haul trucks. Switkes has his Commercial Driver Learners permit and is on his way to getting his full license — so he won’t be on the road driving a Peloton-equipped truck just yet. However, he and his company are driving towards deploying V2V technology and truck platooning in a more concrete way than others in the industry. Things look positive for 2015.

[1] Peloton’s Network Operations Center (NOC) coordinates trucks to find linking partners on the road and enables cross-fleet platooning. Geo-fencing enables trucks to platoon only on appropriate roads (accounting for passing lanes, topography and other factors), in safe conditions, with safe drivers. (http://www.peloton-tech.com/about/)

 

 

Florida Automated Vehicles Summit

Florida Automated Vehicle Summit 2014

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The Florida Automated Vehicles Summit 2014 begins next week. Time is running out to register! Online registration is now closed but you can download the onsite registration form and bring the completed form to the registration desk.

As the 2nd Annual Summit kicks off, Florida DOT has organized key state agencies, universities and private sector partners to advance the framework for implementing automated vehicles on Florida’s roads.

Experience autonomous and connected vehicle technologies for yourself to get a better understanding of these emerging technologies and weigh-in on the challenges and opportunities these technologies pose for Florida’s economy, transportation infrastructure, and citizens.

  • Hear about the state of the industry and Florida’s burgeoning involvement
  • Engage public and private stakeholders to further advance their discussions within Florida
  • Experience vehicle automation and discover who is developing these technologies
  • Find out about the current regulatory environment surrounding these technologies

Don’t miss out on this opportunity. We hope to see you there.

Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort

Utah State University

Cyber Security and Vehicle Communications

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Darcy Conlin

This is our second article highlighting the work being done at Utah State University under Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor Ryan Gerdes. Our previous article introduced the platooning research and testing that is currently underway at USU. This article will take a closer look at the electronic communication within a vehicle and between vehicles. We were able to sit in on a discussion with Professor Gerdes and eTrans Chief Security Office Manuel Villar. The two shared their experience, concern and hopes in moving forward with the development of secure electronic communications among our future vehicles. While isolated vehicles are noteworthy from a security perspective, what is more intriguing to these two gentlemen is when you have a group of vehicles that are interacting together.

There is a growing need for our automobile manufacturers to be in sync with cyber security experts to develop safe and secure vehicle communications. Electronics were slowly introduced over the first 100 years of the automobile’s existence to make our cars run better and improve our own personal comfort, but the systems worked independently. Then in 1980, GM introduced a data communication link from one electronic module to another within the Cadillac [1]. The link was one wire, point to point, linking the engine control module to the fuel data panel[2]. Thus began the intricate communications system that interconnects electronic components inside a vehicle. The term for this specialized network is a CAN bus.

As background, CAN (also referred to as CANbus or CAN bus) is a network used in every-day products consisting of multiple microcontrollers that need to communicate with each other[3]. Robert Bosch originally created CAN in 1986. The CAN data link layer protocol is the communication system you will find in most passenger vehicle control systems. Click here to read more about CAN from CiA (CAN in Automation). CAN is implemented in hardware in the microcontrollers of about 25 chip manufacturers[4]. The BMW 850 coupe is noted as the first CAN Bus vehicle to enter the market in 1986.

Before CAN bus

Before CAN bus

After CAN bus

After CAN bus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both Villar and Gerdes agree that CAN is not designed with any inherent security. Through their eyes, it has been surprising to see the type of information that was going across these buses and the fact that it wasn’t segmented. For example, the infotainment system of a vehicle was on the same bus as the engine control. In Gerdes’ words “there’s no confidentiality, no integrity and no assurance here.” Researchers have found that by reverse engineering they can easily gain access to this surplus of electronic communication. And when someone has access to that information, they have access to control those parts of the vehicle, for example, to turn the engine off. BAM! This has the potential for obvious problems.

When vehicles were isolated systems, this wasn’t much of an issue. However, as vehicles become more connected whether through infotainment systems, Bluetooth connections or the DSRC safety systems the government is planning to mandate, controlling access to and securing the electronics in the vehicle becomes much more important. In addition, Professor Gerdes believes that in order to increase safety on our roads we’re going to need to get vehicles traveling closer together, or platooning. Unless we’re going to build more roads and better drivers (which doesn’t seem very likely, at least until we get driverless vehicles), we need to make platooning a reality so that a greater number of vehicles can take up the road with the existing infrastructure.

In order for vehicles to travel safely together in a platoon, they need to talk to each other. That talking includes sharing some digital information. As we’ve noted, connected vehicles represent a security concern. This is where a public key infrastructure (PKI) comes into play. A PKI involves a set of hardware, software, policies and standards that are required to create, manage and distribute digital certificates. The digital passing - - and parsing - - of all connected vehicle (CV) information requires a trustworthy PKI. Mr. Villar recognized that plenty of security and technology experts are trying to develop the PKI for CV’s with low bandwidth. However, with so many keys out on the infrastructure that may be unrealistic.

Gerdes agreed. He added that this is the reason that part of his research work is to enable peer-to-peer security[5]. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. Within this P2P, a secure key exchange needs to be created. Gerdes states, “We have some ideas for both key generation and the exchange between vehicles that are traveling together in a group. They don’t require trust and infrastructure since your establishing keys within a group of vehicles surrounding you. We want to be sure that the protocols are resistant to a super majority of attackers at any one time.”

This P2P system is both hardware and software. Gerdes says that given the way radios are built today, they may not require a modification. It would make use of physical layer security, hardware security, as well as some traditional network security.

Villar: Do you see this residing on the communication layer or on the CAN bus itself?

Gerdes: It would have to talk to the CAN bus because it needs to tell other components, “I’m not going to forward you a message from this radio.” But it would actually be contained within the radio.

Villar: If you are communicating with the different systems on the bus, how do you not flood the CAN bus with messages that could potentially effect the time of response for life safety systems?

Gerdes: I don’t advocate using the same bus that all the other components in the vehicle are using. I’m in favor of segmenting our systems as much as possible.

The essential goal here is to build these systems to be secure from inception. No one is pointing fingers at the great engineers of our auto manufacturing companies. It is simply that these issues have not been of concern until we started discussing how to connect our vehicles and let them talk to each other. In the past our auto manufacturers didn’t have to think much about anyone gaining access to these systems except for repairs. As we begin to look into the future, that is clearly not the case. Villar concurs, “CAN is like any server or any system, if I can get my hands on it, I can own it.” Gerdes likened it to how we used to think about firewalls. “We used to think a firewall was a hard protective shell, but on the inside, since you have this hard protective shell, you just leave everything soft and really easy to break into, left completely unprotected. “

Our vehicle electronic systems are at a crossroad and our technology and automobile industries are in the middle of that intersection. It’s imperative that security research such as what Gerdes manages at USU, and the cyber security expertise that Villar possesses both continue to scrutinize these systems to ensure they are secure from the onset. Let’s keep the conversations going. Stayed tuned to Driverless Transportation as we hope to get Villar and Gerdes together again this spring out in Utah to test some of their theories.

 

 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_bus

[2] Ronald W. Cox, Local Area Network Technology Applied to Automotive Electronics Communications, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, VOL. IE-32, No. 4, November 1985, Page 327-333

[3] http://www.canbus.us

[4] http://www.canbus.us

[5] peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between peers.

GM Cadillac

What’s New - Carnegie Mellon Celebrates 30 Years

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John Estrada

Given the short holiday week in the U.S. because of the Thanksgiving Holiday, we’ll just have a quick summary of news this week.

There was a remarkable milestone in the news this week. Who says that self-driving cars are a recent phenomenon? The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) celebrated 30 years of self-driving car technology on November 20th. As noted on CNBC, Farnam Jahanian, the VP for Research at CMU says, “This success story epitomizes how innovation advances when engineers, computer scientists and robotics researchers collaborate.”

Tesla Motors (TSLA) drove the D20 again for the second straight week, losing $15.90 or 6.15% of its value to end the week at $242.78. The D20 lost $17.19 or 1.23% to end the week at 1,381.53. There were 8 losers and 11 gainers with Denso (DNZOY) finishing the week where it started at $23.52. BlackBerry (BBRY) was the biggest percentage loser dropping $0.96 to $10.24 for an 8.56% loss. Continental (CTTAY) and Daimler (DDAIF) were the biggest percentage winners at 4.78% and 4.11%. Continental closed up $1.85 to end the week at $40.58. Daimler closed up $3.15 to end the week at $79.72.

Last week, we.Conect hosted their North American version of the Automotive Tech.AD show in Troy Michigan.   The event had a great collection of speakers from industry and academia. It was very informative and had a good mix of both business and technical presentations. One of the big strengths of the we.Conect shows is the networking opportunities that are created by the format of the show. The organizers go out of their way to make interactive, small group sessions where you get a real chance to interact with other participants of the show. Their next big show is in Berlin in February.

TRB, AUVSI and UMTRI announced the dates and location for the 2015 Automated Vehicles Symposium - July 20 - 24 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

We’ve collected a bunch of other news that’s been circulating around the globe this week. Click here to read more.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our U.S. readers. Have a wonderful Thursday to everyone else.

Happy Thanksgiving

eTrans2020 Logo

eTrans2020 ITSWC Data Analysis

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eTrans2020, Showcasing Cloud-based Services

The ITS World Congress in Detroit last month was an opportunity for U.S. DOT Affiliated Test Bed Member, eTrans2020, to showcase their cloud-based services. According to John Estrada, eTrans2020 CEO, “As our name implies, eTrans2020 is realizing the future of transportation built on cloud-based services.  Affiliated Test Bed membership and our active participation in the Southeastern Michigan V2X architecture gave us a front-row seat. We want to be the first to showcase the benefits and advantages of sending data to the cloud and making it available to a diverse set of public and private users.”

At ITS-WC, the USDOT made available several vehicles to demonstrate the benefit of V2V and V2I technology and cloud-based data. As part of this effort, the vehicles passed vehicle information, essentially copies of Basic Safety Messages (BSMs) up into the cloud to a data warehouse. Interested parties could then subscribe to the data warehouse and get access to the data. eTrans2020’s vision is to leverage this capability, which they demonstrated at ITS-WC.

Data Analysis and Refinement Process demonstrated

eTrans2020 specializes in software, data quality assurance and security. They have developed a suite of tools to gather and analyze this vehicle data with a focus on security. Over the course of about the five days of ITS-WC, almost 1.5 million records of BSM type messages were collected. During the show, the progress of these vehicles were tracked in real-time. The following picture, one of the key outputs of the USDOT Affiliated Test Bed program, shows the flow of data during the event.

Transportation Data Flow

The three steps for the data, as shown above, to access eTrans2020 were as follows:

  1. Each vehicle stored BSM information and passed it to the Connected Vehicle Wide Area Information Distributor
  2. From there it went to the Southeast Michigan Situation Data Clearing House
  3. In the third step, it flowed to eTrans2020 cloud based system which have previously subscribed to receive that type of information.

Once eTrans2020 received the information, it would begin to process it and display it. The following picture are examples of eTrans2020 displays that are used to monitor and process the information in real-time.

eTrans2020 Displays

For eTrans2020 though this is just the first step.  John noted, “As you would expect the raw data collected, as is, is just a starting point. We analyze the collected data to find anomalies with the data and potential issues with how the information is processed.  This is the guide to help us find the records or series of records where the information just doesn’t line up or warrants further investigation, what you might call a refinement process.” This initial step helps to identify:

  • Missing fields
  • Records out of sequence (where the timestamps go in reverse)
  • Records where the vehicle doesn’t know its position or where it reports a clearly incorrect position
  • Records coming too close together or too far apart
  • Anomalies with the reported speed or with a comparison of the reported speed with a calculated speed
  • Anomalies with the rate of change in elevation
  • Anomalies with reported and calculated heading.

The second step is to “qualify the data”, that is use a set of data analysis tools to understand the root cause of data issues or errors. Data needs to be “qualified”, that is either have any issues resolved or to flag the data for further investigation and refinement (e.g. generally additional data is needed).

What we have learned so far

eTrans2020 preliminary results have shown:

  • There are significant variations in how the individual vehicles operate.
  • The vehicles seem to “drift” at times, report incorrect data and then return.
  • In general, there isn’t an obvious pattern to the reporting timing
  • The issues tend to be inter-related

The figure below is a sample output from this process.

eTrans2020_Sample_Output

eTrans2020 and John’s team will provide the USDOT team a detailed presentation. Those interested in seeing the full report, please contact John Estrada at jestrada@etrans2020.com.

What’s Next?

eTrans2020 is also working on additional metrics to assess the ”quality” of their process.  Ultimately, they will score records as to data quality. As the data records are received, decisions therefore can be made on the usefulness of the data and the robustness of the security.

John concludes, “Security by design is an important design principle that needs to be evaluated. Leveraging cloud-based services is a new arena of development for the transportation industry and therefore has new challenges, namely security. We welcome the opportunities to be on “bleeding edge” of development.  We try out and test our new ideas at the various test beds, which gives us access to the emerging infrastructure.”

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