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Nicole Coene
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you in the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Nicole Coene and I will moderate today’s seminar. Today’s topic is: Connected Trucks – Research and Implementation Initiatives.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today we’ll have three presentations, given by:
Osman D Altan received B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from METU in Ankara, Turkey, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of California in Berkeley. During his initial career worked at Space Sciences Laboratory on scientific satellite systems launched by NASA for data acquisition and briefly taught Universities. Osman spent most of his career at General Motors Research & Development Center specializing on active safety systems, automated systems, and connected systems. He has 18 patents on related subjects and contributed to company’s launch of commercial products on safety, and comfort & convenience systems. Later, he joined US DOT’s VOLPE Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts working on performance requirements of safety systems based on connectivity, and automated vehicle projects. Currently he is with US DOT’s Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center managing several projects related to connected automation.
Steve Boyd is Co-founder and Vice President of External Affairs for Peloton Technology, a Silicon Valley-based connected and automated vehicle technology company that is bringing innovations in safety and efficiency to the freight transportation industry. For the last decade, Steve has worked with leading edge transportation and energy enterprises and advocated for policy change and market innovation to accelerate progress in these sectors. Previously, he has served as an Assistant Press Secretary in the White House, a Producer at the PBS News Hour, and held a variety of leadership roles with technology companies, national political campaigns, federal agencies and public policy initiatives. Steve holds an Environmental Science degree from Pennsylvania State University with minors in Economics and Political Science and studied international business and finance at the University of Manchester (UK). He is an active member of several industry stakeholder groups including the Transportation Research Board’s ITS Committee, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Trucking Associations (ATA), and the ATA’s Technology & Maintenance Council and its Automated Driving & Platooning Task Force.
Today’s seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. If time allows, we will open up the phone lines for questions as well. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
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I’m now going to turn it over to Osman Altan of Turner Fairbanks to get us started.
Osman Altan
Thank you, Nicole. Good afternoon and good morning. This is Osman Altan from Turner Fairbanks Highway Research Center. For the first part of my presentation, I’m going to overview the activities related to truck platooning through FHWA. Then, we will talk about the other project which is related to trucks at the end.
First of all, I would like to give you a quick overview on vehicle and infrastructure communications. There are two basic global communications systems. The first is emerging, called DSRC. This is applicable for V2V and V2I and vice versa, as well as vehicle-to-anything – that could be pedestrians or whatever we can think of. The important thing about DSRC is it’s very proactive and predictive. Those are the important characteristics of this communication system.
As you know, there have been great advances in vehicle sensing systems during the past 20 years, especially RADAR, lasers, video imaging. But those are all reactive systems. Whereas communications and other enabling technology add another dimension to our systems which is proactive and predictive.
Now, an important part is, this is a global deployment. At this points there are efforts in major markets like Japan, US, Europe, as well as other regions in this area. It is based on stable standards. The lower level standards are IEEE standards, the upper level (application) standards are Society of Automotive Engineers. By having these standards and strong industry / government cooperation, this is going to be deployed commercially and globally. That is what auto makers want. They want global standards to commercialize their products.
As you see, there are a few minor differences between the standards in these markets. However, there are harmonization efforts going on and those will be resolved. What we need from this type of communication is free and interference free spectrum and of course clear usage rules for interoperability. We want all the infrastructure, all the vehicles, all the standards to be able to communicate with each other.
At this point, Japan is ahead of Europe and US. As we know, in the US, there is an effort to regulate this (of course we don’t know when that is going to happen, but my opinion is sometime around 2021). However, we are voluntarily (at least one company that we know of) put DSRC on their vehicles and is operational at this point.
Now, the second global standard is the wireless communications. Right now, we have 4G/LTE. It is extensively used. Used in our cell phones for accessing WWW, texting, and all that stuff. The next generation, 5G is in the works and is expected to come after 2020, however there are versions of it being deployed, for example India has some programs going on this year. I don’t know if they deployed. The standards are not here yet, there is some work to be done.
If we look at 5G, it is compatible with the earlier versions (4G and 3G and Wi-Fi). The important fact is, it has to go through the router. If we compare both of them, DSRC has a broadcast mode that is very important. Any vehicle, any infrastructure system is capable of broadcasting to everything around 300m nominal range. Of course, this range changes by the environment. So, this is device to device communications. It is fast and reliable, with minimal delay. It is applicable for real-time control, mainly V2V, for example automated vehicles and active safety systems.
On the other hand, 4G, 5G is non-broadcast mode. Has unlimited range (which is nice), it runs through the server, but is non-deterministic and has a long delay. With 5G, they say the delay is going to be much shorter, but the current one is applicable to what I call slow applications mainly V2I like speed harmonization and curve speed warning.
So, this is the enabling technology for many of the connected automation applications we are working on. Now, I’m going to overview the projects we have at FHWA. The first is partial automation for truck platooning. Let me give you an overview of that. First, why do we need platooning? Also called coordinated, or cooperative adaptive cruise control.
The major stakeholders are owners and fleet operators. As I learned when I started this project, the number 1 cost of owners and fleet operators is fuel. So, if we can lower the fuel costs, then it is a great benefit. From the drivers’ perspective, workload reduction, comfort, and convenience is important. OEMs always want to introduce innovative products and increase their market share. So, they are in this game as well. Finally, infrastructure owners and operators want to increase the roadway efficiency.
Finally, safety. Safety is very important in everything we do at FHWA and USDOT. Safety is the overriding attribute for everything. We’re at least maintaining the existing safety or enhancing it.
Now, let me talk about the partial automation for truck platooning. This is a 3-year project with a 3-month extension. This is the project team. This is funded out of FHWA (actually there are two projects). These two projects are funded through exploratory advanced research programs. The prime contractor is CALTRANS. Under CALTRANS the technical sub-contract is the PATH program of UC Berkeley. We have several sub-contractors; the prime ones are Volvo Technology and Cambridge Systematics. Volvo is providing the trucks; Cambridge Systematics is providing the simulation. Peloton is an unfunded team member. They are very useful and serve an advisory role and are a conduit to us on the other project for platooning. LA Metro and Gateway cities are important partners in this and are cooperating with us. They do not contribute technically, but in many ways they contribute and support us because they are interested in this project. In the demos, LA Metro is playing an active role.
So, we have many project deliverables. A number of reports and eventually a final report. The project is still on going. We just conducted the first one in the Los Angeles area in the port of Long Beach. There is an upcoming final demo that is going to be in the DC Area. Of course, we have outreach activities, especially during the last part of the project. Now, the project goals are identifying near-term opportunities for cooperative adaptive cruise control, energy savings, traffic flow, maintaining or improving safety. The important thing is acceptance of the short gaps by the truck drivers. It is very important. For the fleet operators and owners, of course energy savings. We would like to provide all data and the demonstrations to show the benefits to industry and public stakeholders.
This is the experimental set up of the system. Let me explain this briefly. We have 3 truck platooning systems. So, it is a little bit more complicated. The industry is going after 2-truck platooning. In the future, it is going to extend to 3 trucks, maybe even longer. These trucks have radars to determine the distance between them when they are running in automated mode. Also, a video camera. The information from video camera is fused with the radar to accurately determine the range between the trucks. All the trucks are in continuous communications using DSRC. This is the very important aspect of truck platooning.
One thing to remember is, this is a Level 1 system. So, longitudinal control only. The engine speed and brakes are controlled. The driver steers the truck. The driver is always in control and can always override the system by touching the breaks or hitting the pushbutton next to him or her.
These vehicles are already equipped with production adaptive cruise control and the lead truck is either manually or ACC-driven. The gap between the trucks are managed by time-headway. So, this will be the driver’s preference. The Volvo trucks we are using already have some active systems. So, we will build on top of them. They have electronic stability system, forward collision warning, lane keeping systems, and so on. However, we’re not using the lane changes or lane keeping systems. Those are disabled in this project.
If we look at the existing project trucks, we have 3 of them. 3 identical trucks. They have a combination of production and add-on improvements. Video cameras and ACC are production. The data fusion between them and a 5hz GPS that is faster than normal. The DSRC radio. Two DSRC antennas offer reliable connectivity. We added a PC104-based computer where the algorithms for cooperative adaptive cruise control and a supplementary display to the driver to tell him or her what is going on. Of course, there is an emergency disengage button. So, this is what we have on the truck.
Very quickly, I mentioned gateway cities. Gateway cities is a consortium of cities along I-710 in CA, running into Port of LA in Long Beach. This is a very congested and polluted highway. Gateway Cities has a project to upgrade this system and they’re using many technologies. One of the technologies is automation. So, they’re very much interested in this technology.
One of the concepts they have is to have this second-tier roadway on the freeway and one of the lanes will be dedicated for automated trucks. That’s in the plans, but we don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen. CALTRANS is very interested.
Now, in general, platoons will be running in public traffic and there are going to be many challenges to that. For example, different types of vehicles. We know that manually driven vehicles compared to automated vehicles are very different. We must establish reliability in detection and communication. Trucks have very slow dynamics. I’ve learned that again in this project. I had the opportunity to drive these trucks in closed courses and at full speed. They are very different in their flexibility and maneuverability. All of these are challenges of using platooning in public traffic.
As I mentioned, from the drivers’ perspective: workload reduction and acceptance is very important. So, we’re doing lots of human factors activities. I’m not going to describe all of them, but one is the human machine interface or driver vehicle interface. What kind of information does the driver need in this type of driving? Normally the vehicles are going to be closer to each other. Secondly and very important is driver gap acceptance. The driver must feel comfortable and safe while driving these vehicles, otherwise the systems are going to have very hard acceptance.
So, we’re doing the DVI development with Volvo. They play an active role in that they have a truck simulator, driving simulator. We ran many tests there. This is just a quick shot there, for example. The one you see here is the scene description that is generated. These are the driver information displays while the subjects are driving the driving simulator.
On top of that, we have to do testing on the roads. For that, we got permission from CHP for example. There was a limitation of 100’ minimum distance between trucks and that has been resolved by CA legislature. They allowed us to drive the trucks closer to each other. We’re driving under 50’ in many of our tests. In addition to this, we have an alternate route in case that road is congested or there are problems. The alternate is in the CA, SF Bay area.
In addition, we have done fuel benefits testing and we collaborated with transport Canada. Transport Canada was receptive on this because they don’t have the funds to build the systems, but they are very interested in learning about the system benefits. So, they took all the costs associated with testing and we moved our trucks to their test track. This is about 4 miles long all together. We ran several weeks of testing here. Data collection and extraction. This is one of the trucks – this truck is used for collecting data as the tests were running on the temperature, wind, and so on.
On this truck, you can see that there are side skirts and boat tails on our trucks we used the same aerodynamics. We did testing with and without these aerodynamics. Of course, for the fuel usage we had to measure the amount fuel usage very accurately. Transport Canada installed an auxiliary fuel tank and before and after each test this was removed and weighed very accurately so we can determine the benefits.
Very quickly, these are the benefits. We’ve done tests with standard trailers with and without any aerodynamics. What I showed you were the individual benefits with standard and aerodynamics. This is the combined. As you can see they were additive and we got very good with the aerodynamics. We got up to 17% fuel benefits in the third trailing truck. So, this project is going very well, it is almost completed. What is needed at this point is on road tests for driver gap acceptance. This is going to happen probably in April at the latest in May. The final demo will happen during the summer in the DC area.
Now, we also have a second project. Very quickly, this is funded by the EAR program, Heavy Truck Operative Adaptive Cruise Control System. This is about a three-year project. In this project Auburn University is leading. The leading technical organization is Peloton. Steve Boyd will be talking shortly. ATRI plays an active role. Another supplier is Meritor-Wabco. This is based on Peterbilt trucks. The main difference is that two truck platooning system. The emphasis of this project is slightly different from the first. We don’t’ want to have 2 identical projects of course. They’ve done vehicle simulation and aerodynamic simulation in the project. They looked into traffic flow and mobility impacts. This project is completed, however there is an extension for this project to do further fuel benefits analysis.
They’ve done lots of track testing in TRC in Ohio with different loading. We did the same thing in the first project. 65k lbs. of load. Also with zero load. It used different constant distance gaps from 30’ to 150’. 55 to 70 MPH. The previous project did 55 and 65 MPH. So, 2 different speeds.
Now, the third project we funded was truck following behavior. This is basically data mining. It’s been completed. My colleague, Dr. Vadakpat was in charge of this. It ended in October 2015 (there may have been an extension, I’m not sure). It was based on the data sources on 2 projects. These 2 projects were both funded by USDOT. The first one was integrated vehicle based safety system. The second one was the safety pilot. In both projects, there were heavy vehicles. As you can see, the total amount of mileage on those was over 1 million miles. So, there was significant miles there. So, the main question we wanted to answer was “How closely do trucks follow other vehicles on highways?”
This report is available to anyone; you can go out and get it or write to me and I’ll send it.
For example, on the second platooning project, there was an interview session. Many drivers mention that we try a 6 second gap. I don’t’ know if anyone has seen a 6 second gap, but especially in the DC area, I’ve never seen one.
Here we have lots of data. We looked at the types of trucks, speeds, road types, road conditions, weather, and visibility. How they all impacted. What is the safety impact? Is there any hard braking? And so on. Extensive data mining. A really good report has been produced out of this. So, the Final Report and briefings are being completed now.
Now we have another upcoming project. This is not funded yet, it’s in the works. The Human Factors Issues Related to Truck Platooning Operations. This one is to look at human factors issues of other drivers in the presence of truck platoons. As most of us are driving, how do we behave as we see truck platoons driving around us. 2 trucks, 3 trucks, maybe in the future even more. This is going to analyze this. At this phase, it’s going to be a driving simulator type of study and then it will move to a test track in the future. But that is not the purpose of this project.
As you can see, the driving simulator test plan and test results are very important and will generate test track plans.
So, if you have any questions, I’ll answer them at the end. Nicole I’m turning it back over to you. Thank you.
Nicole Coene.
Thank you, Osman. We’re now going to move on to Steve Boyd’s presentation of Peloton’s technology.
Steve Boyd
Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to this venue and to the FHWA and the audience of other folks joining in. FHWA and USDOT and the broader community of state transportation leaders that we’ve been able to work with over the years who are really excited by the leadership at the federal and state level. I look forward to our ongoing work together with everyone here. I also want to thank Osman and Nicole and Chip for hosting this and for the chance to speak to you today.
In our work at Peloton, we’ve been working closely with federal highways on a number of projects that Osman described. Also with other parts of DOT and a number of the states.
At Peloton, we’re focused on using connectivity and automation to improve safety, efficiency, and insight for fleets and the overall highway system. Specifically, we’ve been working closely with suppliers and OEMS and the fleets to deliver new levels of safety, efficiency and operational improvement to the fleets.
So, as we’ve all seen, there is a very rapidly moving picture when it comes to global activity, both on truck platooning and other forms of connectivity and automation when it comes to heavy duty vehicles. This is just a sampling of some of those things and the history that goes back to the 90’s. Early truck platooning work that was done at Cal’s Path program and work that USDOT has done on these topics. Global players, the work that they have been doing as well. Most recently we’ve seen significant work that was done in the EU platooning challenge last year that culminated in 6 OEMs moving truck platoons across Europe. 2 and 3 truck platoons operating at Level 1 and 2 automation across multiple countries in Europe. All arriving at Port of Rotterdam in April 2016. A lot of acceleration going on in Europe on this. Their focus in that activity was very much on showing the need for European countries to harmonize their rules related to truck platooning, to show that this technology is coming to market, and that all the OEMs are working in that direction. That the technology is increasingly ready for commercial deployment.
Here in the US, Peloton has been working with a number of the OEMs here, including some that have a global footprint. OEMs like Volvo and others. To deploy truck platooning here in the US. Currently we’re the closest to bringing this to market and we’re excited to be working with the state and federal governments to bring these things forward.
So, in the trucking space, as you all know the US trucking market is a very large one. Measured over 700 billion in revenues. We’re working to address the key pain points for major fleets and all the fleets. Fuel costs that still represent (even at low diesel costs) over 34% of a typical fleet’s operating costs. Accident and crash costs of $90 billion plus each year. That number goes up with higher freight volumes and activities. That number represents fuel expenditures related to crash congestion, not to mention the tragic aspects of these crashes. That’s a key part of our focus here at Peloton. A top focus.
The environment in which we’re operating is one in which the fleets have razor thin profits. 3% or less. They don’t have a lot of profits to put towards truck improvements. Only the largest fleets can do this. We’re trying to unlock the safety systems cost challenge where safety systems cost more than some fleets can spend on individual trucks. We’re trying to solve that by unlocking efficiency benefits that come with having active safety and V2V. Linking active safety to bring efficiency and then requiring them to put higher quality safety systems on each truck. These are needed for truck platooning or for cooperative adaptive cruise control.
Our focus – preventing accidents, saving fuel, improving mobility, improving efficiency for fleets and, as a result, the whole freight system. Across the globe, we’re seeing a large number of companies reaching near commercial operations with truck platooning or truck automation systems. Working in the states, many of them are partners with Peloton.
Specifically, we brought together investment from these leaders in the trucking industry, technology, and energy spaces. These don’t represent exclusive relationships, there are financial investments by these players. We’re working closely with them. We have investments from Volvo, Volvo Group, Volvo Trucks, and the Volvo Mack branch here in the US. They are not an exclusive e partner, we’re able to work with the other truck systems. We have an investment from the venture arm of UPS and many other fleets. These are all non-exclusive.
On the technology / energy side, we have players like Intel. I know you’ve all seen them have a growing presence in the truck and passenger car automation space with their acquisition of Mobileye and the other things they’re doing as an Internet of Things leader. Other companies like Nokia, Lockheed Martin, and BP are active in other parts of the space.
We’re going to watch a video briefly. If the video doesn’t run properly, we’re going to put these 2 URLs on the screen. That is where you can watch these videos then separately after the presentation. Not sure if you can click or copy on your screen to get these URLs. If not, I think you’ll be able to access this presentation later. These are all still available on our website at peloton-tech.com. We’re going to try this video and see if it works.
Nicole Coene
Everybody, I’m also going to post the link if you can’t see it on the webinar.
Steve Boyd
There may or may not be audio. If anybody is not getting audio, I can kind of narrate.
Silence during video from 41:15 to 44:10.
OK, looks like it finished playing. OK Great. So, hopefully, some of you were able to see that. Some folks in the comments were getting different quality and not getting audio in some cases. I did post the link to the video in the chat. In my slides there’s the links as well.
As you could see in the video, what we showed was a little of the driver experience related to our driver assisted truck platooning system. Two truck combinations only. Focused on building on the long tradition of team driving in trucking – where drivers work together on the road as they traverse the same routes. Our system very much builds on that tradition. Uses V2V communication to provide instantaneous links between the trucks and a driver to driver dedicated link. Drivers working together on the road, observing together, and having an improved team driver experience. That’s a key part of this. Empowering the drivers, providing them with better information and awareness of the trucks around them.
Moving on to the next slide, at the core of what we’re doing, we’re making each individual truck safer at all times. We’re improving driver awareness with enhanced navigation and over the horizon alerts. Best in class active safety in each truck that’s always on. Collision avoidance, lane departure warning, and a suite of other things that come with the best in class packages. This includes blind spot radar and other solutions. These days, trucks that have those systems have better specs to begin with like Electronic Stability Control. Our system also requires air disc brakes which is an improvement. Better stopping power, better consistent stopping power, and better brake reliability as well. These brakes don’t go out of service as easily as your traditional drum brakes. In both the case of collision avoidance systems and these active safety system, and air disc brakes - there has been an unfortunate slow pace of adoption due to the cost pressures in the industry and some legacy approaches. Our approach is to help incentivize fleets to break through on that. Deploy best in class safety. Use air disc brakes. But make economically possible for fleets.
At the core, individual trucks safer at all time, wherever they go. Empowered and informed drivers. Better informed fleets.
Next slide, here again is the individual truck. Improved safety at all times. We’re able to user our cloud based management system and V2V communications to pair up appropriate trucks to work together and the V2V communication over DSRC providing a very robust link. Syncrhonizing braking and acceleration. Sharing active safety information. Rear truck benefiting from the look ahead view that the front truck has. Radar looking ahead 800’. Collision avoidance on the front truck benefiting the back truck. The same link is used to share video, so the view of the road from the front truck is shared with the rear truck. The driver gets a window looking through the front truck to the road ahead. Something that improves completely on the environment on the highway. Stacked up, can’t’ see through each other. Don’t know anything about the trucks around them. Don’t know the weight and braking ability of the trucks around them. Our system transforms that situation. The trucks now are in pairs. Those pairs are then spaced out between other traffic. So, when you’re in a platooning combination, the front truck of the platoon maintains a long headway in front of it so that 2 truck package traverses the road team driving together. The drivers are fully engaged in steering in both truck and are maintaining proper headway in front of the lead truck in that combination. That is a safety improvement to the current situation on the highways.
Our cloud-based network operations system is helping match the truck. Helping drivers understand which truck they should team up with in their own fleet. In the future between different fleets that agree to work together. The system helps the drivers intelligently order the trucks. So, the truck with the longer stopping distance or the with a weight that we measure electronically would go in front, always.
We also dynamically adjust the truck characteristics and braking capability. We only allow platooning to be enabled on appropriate, multi-lane limited access highways where the topography is correct. Where you don’t have blink hill crests or turns. Also, where you have the appropriate conditions of weather and traffic.
So again, only pairs of trucks. Not longer chains. We think this is the best way to introduce truck platooning into typical longer haul highway environments. Longer chains may present a perceived obstacle to other motorists. Over time there may be use cases where somewhat longer chains of trucks can be allowed and operable, but this will also come with an acceptance and understanding by drivers of if and when they can cut in between platooning vehicles and not be an obstacle to their movement.
Drivers in both trucks in our system are fully in command and engaged in steering at all times. This is what Osman was referring to Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control and linking the safety systems between trucks. The safety systems inform both drivers about the situation around them and intervene if they are not able to react in time to slow traffic or other conditions.
So, putting us on the scale of where things fall for the SAE levels of automation, we’ve seen other players in the market deploy level 2 systems that control both steering and acceleration / braking. Both longitudinal and lateral movement. These systems provide kind of a limited autopilot capability. If the driver is not informed about the limits of these systems, they become confused and think it is a level 3 system and that creates problems. We want to avoid that. Drivers in our system are fully aware that they must steer. And that they are brain on, fully engaged in the driving task. There’s no takeover issues or mode confusion about what the driver needs to be doing.
At higher levels of automation, we’ve seen google putting together a system (not yet delivered to market) that uses constraints to where the vehicles are operating and how they operate to allow for higher automation. They’re doing that at Google by using lower speed vehicles (under 25 MPH) and not on highways and with other aspects to how they manage it.
Our system is Level 1 automation. Drivers are fully engaged and empowered by the safety systems.
Another view here to how we share and improve awareness – today many drivers don’t have a radio system that helps them communicate with other drivers. Fleets use various systems. Drivers on the road are isolated from each another and are not communicating. Our system connects pairs of trucks for team driving. They have shared video and shared safety system information.
Our approach around cyber security is to use best in class strategy and continue to update these things, working closely with OEMs and other players and leaders in Silicon Valley on cyber security and using high-level approaches to securing all modes of communication and all aspects of our system – both V2V and vehicle to cloud. Those are some of the top principles that we pursue and are continually working on to improve the cyber security both in our system and the systems of our partners.
Our focus again, our north star, is improving safety. Our highest priority. Our goal in getting systems out there is to improve individual trucks safety at all times. You all are very familiar with the data on this and the need for deployment of active safety. We’ve seen the driving problem, not the problem of fatalities on the highway and we need to combat that as quickly as possible. We want to prevent these serious accidents that collision avoidance systems can very successfully address.
In this slide, we highlight that with noting the Conway study that was done a while back showing the dramatic benefits of collision avoidance systems when deployed consistently and effectively. The problem though is the uptake. In Europe, the rolled out a mandate for all new trucks to have collision avoidance and lane departure warnings. There has been a call for this in the US or a call for OEMs to make these systems standard. NHTSA has called for this and others. Many in the trucking industry embrace and support this idea. We think that by working with the OEMs, companies like Peloton and approaches like platooning systems can more rapidly deploy safety systems into the market using market forces and the incentives that come from the efficiency and other benefits.
We also want to improve the specs on each truck. Get air disc brakes out there. This is also a lagging area that Europe has been ahead on. Both electronic braking and the use of disc brakes. We need to catch up and make this something that is economically viable for fleets.
Our focus then, to improve both efficiency and prevent crashes with a stack of different solutions, centering on unlocking the opportunities for efficiency with reasonable improvement to close following with V2V and with the shared safety and other components that improve individual truck safety.
So, we incentivize the options as part of being able to make use of platooning. This raises the standards of speccing and maintenance and support by fleets as well. They need to maintain these vehicles better and more effectively. We’re monitoring those systems and only the best performing fleets are able to use platooning systems as a result.
Our network operations center, this is the way we’re delivering over the horizon alerts and info for drivers and safety management for fleets around their trucks. We’re bringing together the best data, real time, on the road. For planning purposes, helping fleets with the orchestration of platooning and the management of their fleets.
We have a new partnership we announced last month with Omnitracs, one of the global leaders in fleet telematics. This is allowing us to deliver enhanced fleet management solutions and better platooning orchestration. Both within the same fleets and between fleets. Inter-fleet platooning. This allows us some new tools to help drivers team up to help fleet managers better manage their trucks and to support the ability of new solutions that we’ve brought forward using our great sensors and Omnitracs great analysis to bring new solutions to these customers and their existing customer base. This also provides us an opportunity to leverage the broader opportunities around inter-fleet platooning. Many customers are on the Omnitracs system. This will allow fleets’ networks to work together for platooning.
WE have a lot of independent fuel economy validation. I’ve already referred to some of the testing that’s occurred. Several studies by DOE, DOT, and the North American Council on Freight efficiency have repeatedly shown the same pattern on fuel economy benefits. 10% on the rear truck, 4.5 to 5% on the front truck. Repeated tests showing that there are also benefits on longer following distances, out to 75’.
The wider benefits include safety and crash reduction, health improvements, emissions reductions by reducing fuel burn (especially diesel particulate emissions), improved insights for drivers and fleets, improved mobility, freight throughput and efficiency. The high numbers on efficiencies allow a payback period under 1 year for a fleet on a typical truck operation. They need to see at least under 2-year payback and we’re well within that for a typical truck operation with 100,000 miles per year trucks and the operational savings that come with that.
The roadways in which we’re operating are the interstate highway system where the topography, traffic, and other conditions are appropriate. This represents truck volumes across the US on the major freight arteries and you see here the key roadways that are great spaces for truck platooning. Trucks could be stacked up on these roads every day. We want address that and improve the safety on these roadways as well as the efficiency.
The market opportunity is very large in terms of the types of fleets that could use platooning systems with little or no change to dispatching. LTL fleets such as UPS and FedEx have high truck density and could rapidly bring in platooning on their regional haul routes. We’re seeing a lot of benefit for regional haul operations as well as longer haul. Private fleet operations and truckload for hire carriers as well. We’re moving forward on a set of trial plans with a number of these fleets and a variety of different parts of the freight system.
On the market development front, we’ve been working at the federal and state level as Osman was referring to and we’re very excited to be a part of FHWA’s Auburn Peterbilt project which recently completed its main body of work. Then there’s the Caltrans Volvo project we were advisory upon. We were working with Osman and the team there with some of the aspects of the project there in CA. We’ve also been part of the Volvo super trucks 2 team developing next generation solutions that include platooning and working with DOT Smart Columbus project that is ramping up now. We were also excited to be awarded recently one of the few RPE grants in a project with Purdue, Cummins, and a few others that focused on smart connective power trains and platooning. So, improving the look ahead predictive aspects at how engines operate with context of the topography of the roadway and look ahead information about other conditions. Improving how engines operate to higher efficiency along with platooning. This may unlock benefits and efficiencies of 20% above baseline trucks.
We have state-level projects working with Texas and TTI and TXDOT and a few state projects like a California Energy Commission Port of San Diego project that’s kicking off focusing on urban operations using freight signals priority and then once those trucks get to the highway using platooning.
At the state level, we’ve been working with a bunch of the states on both formal demonstrations going back several years. We’ve done those in more than 7 states. We’ve had great progress on the approval for testing or freight trials in over 9 states. High interest from a bunch of others.
This year we’re working very actively in 10 more states on legislation where it may be needed. In other states, an administrative discussion for an allowance for Level 1 assisted truck platooning. In 28 states that do not have a specific numeric following distance rule for tractor trailers. Administratively, a number of them are making an allowance for driver assisted truck platooning. 22 states to have a numeric distance that varies for tractor trailers. In those states, we’ve largely been using legislation. We several good models of bills moving and we expect great headway and progress in 2017 on more states approval for truck platooning as well as administrative allowance of these system.
That, I think, brings me to the end of this discussion and I look forward to questions and a dialogue here. Thank you very much.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Steve. Now we’re going to hand it back to Osman for the final presentation of the webinar.
Osman Altan
Thank you, Nicole. Do you think we have enough time? Are we running out of time? It’s up to you. We forgot to show the video for truck platooning, it’s about 30 seconds.
Nicole Coene
I’ll bring up the video, if folks cannot see Osman’s video, it’s in the file share box.
Osman Altan
The video is very short. It’s a clip from Transport Canada’s fuel benefits study. The trucks are going 65MPH with a 0.6 second time gap between them, so it’s very close.
Nicole Coene
It’s not loading very well. Osman, if you want to go through the rest of your presentation, we can come back to this.
Osman Altan
Yes, let’s do that.
The next project I’m going to talk about is what we codenamed as GlidePath. This is automated eco-friendly cruise control using wireless V2I communications at signalized intersections.
The first project was V2V, this is V2I. It applies to signalized intersections at lower speeds. We know that platooning basically applies for highway operations at higher speeds. However, trucks go door to door, so they will be going through arterial roads with signalized intersections. So, those will play an important role with trucks.
We’ve done this with light, passenger vehicles, but everything I’m going to talk about is applicable with trucks also. In this application, we used 1 intersection with one vehicle, but it’s being expanded to multiple intersections with multiple people.
As you can see in the slides, the traffic signal has a controller box which is SPAT enabled (Signal Phase and Timing) which is connected to a roadside DSRC unit which is continuously broadcasting the SPAT message as indicated here. This is the time left on green or red. 10 times per second. It’s broadcasting the map message. The map message is the geometry of the intersection, the location of the intersection, the number of lanes, any restricted lanes (left turn / right turn only lanes).
So, the vehicle, as it approaches the intersection, it communicates with the traffic signals using the onboard unit and determines the optimum speed profile to pass through this intersection. It has energy benefits as well as safety benefits because this system in automated mode will never run red lights. It also has great mobility benefits because once the vehicle stops, it takes so much time to start them again and make them go.
I’m just going to run through this very quickly. Basically, there are 4 different scenarios as vehicles go through intersections. This is our test profile. The x-axis is the distance. Where you see the traffic signal, that’s where the intersection is. The y-axis is the speed of the vehicle. In our test runs, we start at a stationary position. We command a given speed, and we did this in our own campus in which we can run 20-25 at most 30MPH. So, the vehicle automatically reaches the command speed. It starts cruising. It gets into the range of the DSRC. At that point the algorithm kicks in. The vehicle is in automated mode. This is level 1 automation (even though our vehicle is capable of doing level 2). The purpose is to control the speed profile of the vehicle.
So, in the simplest case, if the vehicle continues at that commanded speed, depending on the timing of the signal and the distance to the intersection, if it goes at the constant speed, it will make it through the green. In some cases, even though it is green, the traffic signal is going to turn red before it reaches the intersection. The algorithm makes a decision to increase the speed of the vehicle without breaking the speed limit (because the speed limit is already in the system), the vehicle goes through the green light, then slows to the commanded speed.
In scenario 3, there is nothing that can be done and the vehicle will have to come to a full stop. It does that in an eco-approach mode with minimal energy. In many cases, the drivers will go at higher speeds then break as quickly as possible. The system will do it very gradually to save energy. Then the launching part is very important. It launches in an eco-friendlyfashion.
Scenario number 4 is that as the vehicle is approaching the intersection, it’s in red state. However, if the vehicle slows down a little bit, the signal will turn green and the vehicle will go through the intersection, then speeds up to the commanded speed. In this way, we are eliminating the stopping of the vehicle. In most cases, drivers will go at a constant speed then stop at the last minute.
By doing all these (I’m going to skip over this), we are improving safety, mobility, and having some energy benefits. This is our intersection on the campus and we built this vehicle. This is the intersection-related part, this is the vehicle related part with the driver-vehicle interface. Also, we’re connected to the internet / Wi-Fi. We’re connected to the system though which we can do analysis of the benefits of the system.
Just a top view of the campus where we’re running the system. We start at a fixed location here. Go through that on the roadway, when we reach here, we automatically disable the system. This is our vehicle, the vehicle we used. We worked with a company called Torc. It’s an automated vehicle platform. On top of that, we built our own computers and algorithm to make it suitable for this application.
This is another view and what is important here is, this tablet is the actual one which the driver uses to command the system. For example, when the driver hits “Go”, the system will go at an automated speed. Here in the center we can see the countdown on the traffic signals. We can see the current speed and instructed speed. All that stuff.
All our instrumentation is in the back of the vehicle. Although this looks like a lot of instrumentation, the bulk of this is power supplies. Only the top part of this is electronics. So, I’ll skip through that.
What we did in this project was totally manual uninformed novice drivers to drive though this at different speeds and different timings. The second stage, we asked them to drive manually, however we gave them feedback through the driver vehicle interface. The interface tells the driver how fast to drive to make it through in an optimal way. Of course, the driver is not like an automated system. He can never follow the instructions point by point. Plus, we found out there is a great amount of distraction on the driver side.
In stage 3 we did a totally automated mode. We ran the experiments with subjects at 30 MPH only with professional drivers. But with other drivers we did 20 and 25MPH only because of safety reasons on our campus. The top shows the traffic signals. We did start these experiments at 5 second increments. We ran many experiments with several drivers.
As you can see, the different scenarios were executed as a result of this. These are the results of our tests. First of all, stage 2 vs stage 1 – we saw about 7% average fuel benefit when we give instructions to the drivers manually vs totally manual driving. The last one shows us the improvement from instructed driving vs totally automatic – we saw 15% improvement. However, the middle one is most important. From totally manual to totally automated – on the average we got 22% fuel benefits. Of course, trucks will experience benefits while driving through arterials with signalized intersections once this is implemented.
So, we learned many things out of this project. There are also related activities in Europe and Japan. Next steps, we’re looking into multiple vehicles and multiple intersections, but I’m going to skip through those. The most important thing that happened is we’re now working with 10-11 auto makes that we have projects going on with. They are very much interested in this type of application. They have plans for early 2020’s to commercially deploy systems like that.
That’s all I have. We’re running out of time and want to take some questions. Nicole, I’m going to turn it over to you. Thank you very much.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Osman. The video was still a little choppy, so maybe after we get to the questions, I can put it up if anyone wants to watch it at the end. Let’s go ahead and start with the questions. First one is for you Osman: will future deployment require a lot more communication relay towers along highways? Is there a technology in the future that will not require towers?
Osman Altan
I think we’re talking about platooning here. Now in platooning, towers or roadside units are not that important. What’s crucial in this system is V2V communications. As long as vehicles are instrumented with communications systems, it will operate. What Steve mentioned was communications with their network operating center that uses a totally different (not DSRC) type of communications. However, when these systems are deployed, it will use V2V communications for operating on the roadway then 4G/LTE (and 5G in the future) to communicate with traffic management centers or any other center needed.
In short, we do not need roadside units for this system to be deployed. The only thing we need is V2V communications and fleet operators will provide that anyways.
Steve Boyd
To underscore, the drivers need no new infrastructure whatsoever.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Steve. I think there was a question for a point of clarification on one of your slides: 113 million gallons from response vehicles was the question they were asking about one of your slides.
Steve Boyd
I think what that number represents is drawn from US DOE or DOT data regarding the fuel burn related to crash congestion, not just emergency response vehicles. So, crash congestion and emergency response.
Nicole Coene:
Thank you. Another question for you: what about human behavior? Not all drivers are always willing to cooperate with other vehicles. Have you experienced any road rage issues?
Steve Boyd
Obviously trucks today experience that. It is their reality out there. What we’re finding in our approach is that we do 2 things. Our system detects vehicles cutting in and makes space for vehicles cutting in. The trucks automatically open up space and allows the vehicle to cut through. If the vehicle stays there, the platoon spacing is further extended and then the platoon will dissolve if the vehicle remains in between them (instead of exiting the road). There is a time duration we allow for that to occur. The safety systems help intervene if the driver in one of the vehicles is not able to respond quickly enough to a given scenario (and ultimately we’re trying to improve the capacity of systems and drivers to respond, and that includes agitated drivers). Compared to trucks on the road today where the trucks do not have any information about the vehicles around them and are often stacked up very closely manually, we can create a smoother flow of truck traffic in a more routinized fashion. Pairs of trucks moving in separated groups. This allows the other users of the road to exit the roadway. Not going between platooned trucks, but using the other spaces around such trucks. Ultimately, we’re trying to improve safety of all the vehicles and create a more structured approach to enhance safety.
Osman Altan
The first project I mentioned is really focused on that. How do other drivers (non-automated drivers, especially light vehicles) behave when there is automated platooning going on. What I would like to comment is, as the technology improves and as the drivers’ acceptance level increases, the gaps are going to get closer and closer. If we happen to have more than 2 trucks platooning systems, they won’t be able to cut in because the gap is going to be too short and we’re going to have long trains of trucks at that point. That is going to pose a problem. That is my personal opinion and many peoples’ opinion. The solution is managed lanes. If you have managed, dedicated lanes you can do that. There are definitely challenges coming in that area.
Steve Boyd
Specific to that, that’s why we’re focused on two trucks. Pairs of trucks. We want to be able to proceed with no new infrastructure or laws requirements. By using two truck combinations you limit how much you need to sequester traffic and that kind of thing. There may be some use cases and existing dedicated truck lanes or express lanes that can be utilized for trucks that would allow for longer combinations of platooning vehicles as needed.
Nicole Coene
Thank you both. Steve another question for you – has Peloton’s system for cyber security been reviewed by third party security company?
Steve Boyd
Yes. Our practice is to work with the cyber security leading players. We have a number of third party folks we’re working with. We’ll be putting out more information about our cyber security approach in the coming period. Obviously, we all want to avoid how widely we detail our procedures in various venues to avoid compromising the security approach. But our approach is to use independently audited methodologies.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. This goes back to what we were talking about previously. How much more difficult – technology-wise – is it to go from a 2 or 3 truck platoon to a greater than 3 truck platoon?
Steve Boyd
Osman can speak to this one, but technology exists and has already been demonstrated. A number of the platoon combinations and formats in Europe were 4 truck and 3 truck and have been. We have been focused on 2-truck solutions for the other reasons: more to do with traffic dynamics and traffic interaction as well as simplicity when it comes to the dispatching and operational pairing of trucks within given freight operations. It gets harder to pre-plan and put trucks together. Only certain fleets can do that with the required freight volumes on given lanes and with given customer requirements. It’s very possible and proven. Operationally it’s a little different. Depends on the setting, use case, and the traffic situation. I’ll carry it over to Osman for further comment.
Osman Altan
My comment is from the technical perspective: first of all, platoon stability becomes important as you increase the number of trucks. String stability is how stable the gap is as you’re travelling. So, that is a challenge. Although for 3 trucks, we’ve improved the system so that’s not an issue. We don’t know what will happen with 4 or 5 trucks if that ever happens in operation.
The second thing is communications. DSRC has a nominal range of 300m. As these truck strings get longer and longer – and of course there is occlusion on curved roads and so on – it’s crucial that the first truck and the last truck be communicating reliably. So, if we lose that communication due to any reason, then the system will have very poor performance and may automatically drop out, depending on how it’s designed. So, very long truck strings are going to impose that kind of problem. There are solutions for that such as message hopping, but that is going to make it very complicated. First truck and last truck have to be able to communicate very reliably. That may impose a problem in the future. Otherwise, it’s possible to have longer strings.
Steve Boyd
I would just follow up to say that certainly as the Path Project with FHWA has shown, 3 truck platoons have proven to be viable, but as Osman is noting, it depends on where you’re using the trucks. You have constraints on how they can function and certainly as you go above 3 or 4 or more it gets more involved and only certain use case environments would be appropriate.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. Two related questions: will the technologies work in areas with limited or no cellular infrastructure such as radio-quiet zones in WV, VA, and far-western MD. On the flip side, will the technology face any challenges in extremely noisy environments where noisy environments are in play.
Steve Boyd
First of all, our system does not require continuous cellular connection for platooning, vehicle dynamics, and vehicle safety critical systems to operate. All of that is on board the truck and in the direct V2V connection that is on board the truck. Trucks are able to operate without cellular for periods of time. What we do is look at particular geofenced areas and we also have an understanding of where the dead spots are. So, we can indicate authorization or non-authorization for platooning in some of these areas. If you have an environment where real-time conditions can change frequently or there are other complications to the roadway conditions and you have low cellular coverage, those are environments where we wouldn’t be able to monitor dynamic changes effectively. So, platooning wouldn’t be viable unless handled entirely by drivers and onboard systems. So, we’re looking at “challenge spots” and how platooning is handled in that area. Certainly, areas where platooning would be disabled due to communications infrastructure gaps. But we also provide a time limited authorizations for platooning. So, if you have appropriate weather and road conditions, properly pair-able trucks, and the drivers on board those trucks are fully engaged and in command of the vehicle, they can be authorized, fall out of communications for a short period of time, continue to have authorization that is persistent on the vehicles, and then responsibility remains in the hands of the driver/operators and the on-board systems. Then the authorizations expire after a certain period depending on how complicated a setting may be. Many times, the dead spots are on very steady condition roadways where the topography is correct.
Related to questions about mountainous areas – platooning doesn’t really work in mountainous areas. You don’t need the aerodynamic efficiencies going downhill. You want the air resistance to slow you down. So, higher mountainous areas are not going to be suitable for typical platooning. Above certain grade changes you’re just not going to use it. Limited line of sight. And you’ve got these weight differentials between the trucks that makes it harder for them to stay together. So, it’s more for rolling hill and flat areas. They’ll be feature applications that can do more for trucks that are paired more in weights. For certain hilly conditions, you might be able to have trucks working together that are similar in weight and characteristics so they can stay together more easily. But they will separate if they’re going to crest a hill so they’re not having a line of sight problem, then get back together again. There are more advanced solutions that will advance as we use more sophisticated mapping and configuring of how truck operations work. Will depend on what fleets and drivers want to do. Ultimately the drivers need to find this to be practical for their part of the operation and what their fleets want to do through certain kinds of geography.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Steve. Osman, did you want to comment at all or move on to the next question.
Osman Altan
Let’s move on. Steve covered this very well.
Nicole Coene
Has there been any thought put to visual indicators or platooning mode for the travelling public.
Osman Altan
That is an operational issue. For example, Google is doing that. Putting blue indicators / blue lights things of that sort. In the future, there could be a mandate on that or voluntarily put in. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a good idea. To indicate that the vehicles are in automated mode. That applies to light vehicles as well. Any vehicles in mixed traffic.
Steve Boyd
The way we’re looking at that, for driver assisted solutions, unlike an automated vehicle where there is a crucial need for motorists to know that vehicles are in a mode not being operated by a natural human driver, we think for driver assisted truck platooning systems, we’re first looking at physical markings on the trucks that indicate they’re equipped, as well as looking at the placarding on the back of trailers to show that they’re platooning equipped trailers. A first step. We’ll be looking at what fleets think is practical and what other folks think is practical, as well as any other kind of indicators. As you know there’s a lot of state-by-state variance about lighting standards on commercial vehicles, as well as some federal standards on that. So, solutions need to be harmonized across the US before any kind of requirements would be put in place. For now, we’re going to work on best practice approaches that provide markings that make it clear that trucks are working together and states will know what fleets in a given state have equipped trucks. Enforcement will know which fleets are operating platooning on a given corridor and those trucks will be marked as equipped and be carrying paperwork showing they’re equipped with the systems.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. This question is for Steve. How does weather play into the system in terms of performance and safety?
Steve Boyd
As I touched on a couple times, but may not have emphasized enough, we disable platooning when weather conditions are not appropriate. When you have weather that represents a traction problem on a roadway or a visibility problem that may cause other traffic interactions that are not positive, we disable platooning. We start very conservatively on this during the introduction of platooning by leading fleets.
Over time, there are certain usages of V2V that can improve safety even if you have low visibility and poor traction. For example, in a blizzard or low traction condition, you can use V2V to separate trucks and maintain a farther following distance between them and allow them to be in communication with each other. Benefiting from the fact that a lead truck is now 500’ ahead. They’re separated but in touch and sharing information. V2V linkage but not the close following. Purely for safety data sharing. But again, we disable platooning and don’t allow it when you have inappropriate precipitation and other such conditions. High winds and other things that may make overall commercial truck operations less stable or less safe. That’s our approach to it. We do it in real time both with weather data and sensor data from the truck indicating changes in traction that may be starting to appear. We also look at sharing data between trucks. Groups of trucks that are further ahead may pick up a weather issue or a traction issue in real time. That information is then sent back to other trucks on the same roadway or the same network of roads. So, their platooning can be disabled in advance of entering those areas where the weather may be changing.
Osman Altan
Let me comment on that quickly. For light vehicles and adaptive cruise control systems – some manufacturer, I think that when the windshield wipers are on for a certain duration, they disable adaptive cruise control. Sensor based systems, for example if your electronic stability control is kicking in for some reason, you automatically disable ACC. Video cameras, if they can detect visibility is low, they can disable the system or change the parameters for platooning. All these things are possible to be implemented.
Nicole Coene
Thank you everyone for sticking with us. We have 3 more questions. What type of training do drivers need to effectively drive under this system?
Steve Boyd
We have a training program that we’ve been developing in collaboration with seasoned driver training experts and fleets. We’re in the process of implementing that training. Working with leading fleet customers that are going to be trialing and then deploying the systems. Using best practices for driver training. The big use is related to training drivers for advanced safety systems and other types of operation. We adapt new ways to apply these systems to the use of cooperative adaptive cruise control. The best use of safety systems. Training is very important and the industry best practice approach in our case as a system supplier and provider to fleets. We’re moving towards some best practice training standards that can be used by fleets and our OEM partners working with fleets. Ultimately, there are going to be multiple providers for platooning and truck automation systems. We’re using a best practice approach to develop these training materials. We do not require a special certification for drivers though. CDL certification can remain as it is. Drivers are trained by fleets to use the specialty systems as they already are today to use collision avoidance systems.
Osman Altan
In the future, there could be some regulation on CDLs that could be added. But I think it is manufacturers’ responsibility to train the drivers at this point.
Nicole Coene
Osman, quick question for you. Is GlidePath replicable at M City?
Osman Altan
Yes, I’m familiar with M-city. It is replicable. Yes, we can do it. Provided that our DSRC is interoperable with the DSRC at the M-City. At this point, the message format, there are multiple formats for these map messages, these are all evolving. As long as they’re compatible, there’s no problem, it will run in that system.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. Last question: what kind of challenges does the GlidePath system experience with a wide mix of vehicles with much different lengths and weights?
Osman Altan
The main challenge for GlidePath-type of systems is mixed traffic. GlidePath is very effective when market penetration is very high. Then the vehicles, all of them automated will be approaching a signalized intersection, it will work fine. As the number of non-instrumented / manually driven vehicles interfere, then of course it loses its effectiveness. That’s the main challenge. Other than that, the system will revert back to ACC mode which is safe. It will never get close to the vehicle in front of it. From that challenge perspective, it’s having mixed traffic is the #1 challenge as far as I can see.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Osman. We’ve gotten through all the questions. Thank you everyone for hanging with us. We’re going to go ahead and close out. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next few weeks on the talking freight website. The next seminar will be held April 19. The topics will be Freight and Land Use Trip Evaluation. Registration is not yet available, but I will send out a notice through the freight planning listserv once it is open. I encourage you to join the freight planning listserv if you have not already done so. Thank you to both of our presenters today and to all of you for calling in. Please enjoy the rest of your day.
