Daimler Trucks is bringing together all of its activities related to automated driving. The new Autonomous Technology Group will focus on the series production of highly automated trucks (SAE level 4).
In 2015, Daimler's Freightliner Inspiration Truck obtained the first-ever road license for a partially automated commercial vehicle.
Daimler
As of 1 June, Daimler Trucks is establishing the Autonomous Technology Group as a global organisation for automated driving, bringing together its worldwide expertise and activities. The main tasks of the new unit comprise overall strategy and implementation of automated driving, including research and development as well as setting up the required operations infrastructure and network, heading towards the series production of highly automated trucks (SAE level 4).
The newly established Autonomous Technology Group is part of Daimler Trucks' global effort to put highly automated trucks onto the roads within a decade. To achieve this, Daimler Trucks announced an investment of more than 500 million euro at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The Autonomous Technology Group is led by Peter Vaughan Schmidt, the current Head of Strategy at Daimler Trucks. "In the first stage, we will focus on use cases of highly automated driving in defined areas and between defined hubs in the U.S.A.," says Schmidt.
Main activities of the Autonomous Technology Group
One of the key activities of the Autonomous Technology Group will be software development for highly automated driving. Another one will be the so-called vehicle project: On the one hand, the vehicle project will be responsible for the redundancy in the chassis. On the other hand, it will take care of the automated driving sensor kit integration. The operations infrastructure and network to be set up by the Autonomous Technology Group – another key activity – will consist of one main vehicle control centre as well as additional stations at logistics hubs.
New unit to include Torc Robotics
The Autonomous Technology Group has a global reach with experts working in various locations throughout the company’s worldwide development network. Some of these locations are Portland and Blacksburg (U.S.A.) and Stuttgart (Germany). More locations will follow as the test fleet is built up and deployed. The Blacksburg-based company Torc Robotics will be part of the newly established Autonomous Technology Group, pending the authorities’ approval of the acquisition recently announced by Daimler Trucks.