As a member of the ENSEMBLE consortium, IVECO has participated in the development and deployment in real traffic conditions of a multi-brand platooning technology agreed between all leading European truck manufacturers.
 

The 46-month project, co-funded by the EU, has demonstrated that platooning could play a key role in achieving sustainable transport and paving the way for multi-brand platooning and autonomous driving – improving fuel economy, CO2 emissions, road safety and traffic efficiency.

The ENSEMBLE project, co-funded by the European Union and led by the Dutch independent research organization TNO, was launched in June 2018 with the aim to develop, test and validate a safe multi-brand platooning technology, demonstrate its feasibility in real traffic conditions, and integrate C-ITS communication services. To achieve this objective, the consortium has brought together the six major European truck manufacturers, the European Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) organization ERTICO, the European Association of Automotive Suppliers CLEPA, and knowledge partners such as the University Gustav Eiffel and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

The project has now reached completion, and the results were presented by the ENSEMBLE consortium during its final public event, which was held in Brussels on 17 March. The project has developed a multi-brand technology agreed between the participating truck OEMs, which included the specification of a secure vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication protocol to ensure the correct behaviour and reaction of each truck in the platoon in every traffic situation. This technology was successfully deployed in real traffic conditions on 23 September 2021 in Spain, in the Barcelona region, when seven trucks prepared by the participating manufacturers drove together in a fully coordinated platoon.

The ENSEMBLE project has also defined two truck platooning functions: Platooning as Support Function (PSF), based on tested technology and capable of dealing with all the use cases encountered in current traffic, and Platooning as Autonomous Function (PAF), the intermediate step towards a fully autonomous truck, which at this time has only been defined in theoretical terms.

In the occasion of the event, Valerio Liga, Advanced Engineering CCAM Project Manager at IVECO, stated: “The ENSEMBLE project represents an important step on our path to connected and autonomous driving. The great collaboration among the main European vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, research centres and universities enables us to demonstrate that the multi-brand platooning functionality can work in real conditions.

“However, the full potential of platooning can only be achieved when the human driver in the follower-trucks is no longer required (or when their hours of service can be extended) and the technology is developed further in order to allow for shorter distances between trucks. This will result in better aerodynamics, lower fuel consumption and improved transport capacity (higher vehicle density on the truck-lane). This is what the Platooning as Autonomous Function (PAF) aims to achieve. Finally, even if the platooning functionality will not have a future per se, the studies that were conducted and the technologies developed during the project will be useful in fostering the development of connected and autonomous driving in Europe in the coming years.”