The 24th ITS World Congress was held in Montreal from October 29 to November 2. The event brought together the world’s leading experts and manufacturers in the field of intelligent transportation. The nearly 5,500 attending delegates had the opportunity to visit over 450 international exhibitors. Field demonstrations of autonomous vehicles were also part of this venue.
FPInnovations was well represented with a booth under the Government of Quebec umbrella, presenting information on its Forestry 4.0 Initiative as well as developments on the Alfred-Nobel autonomous vehicles project.
Jan Michaelsen and Yves Provencher were amongst the speakers. While all previous editions of the conference focused on light-duty vehicles, the Montreal conference was addressing commercial heavy trucks for the first time. A full day was devoted to autonomous heavy vehicles, and particularly to platooning. One could learn that commercial platooning operations will be undertaken in the United States as soon as 2018.
In the United States, seven States specifically passed legislations to allow platooning on a commercial basis and two more authorized platooning testing or pilot programs. Furthermore, thirteen other States have following distances rules that would allow for platooning. Plans are also in place to have platooning on a commercial basis in 2018 just south of the Canadian border, in Michigan. What’s done to stay competitive in Canada?
States Clear Path for Truck Platooning: First Step to Fully Autonomous Vehicles (Bill Kramer – Multistate insider -July 26 2017)
There’s already been a demonstration of cross-border platooning between Michigan and Ontario in 2017. Automated convoy trucks are now truly at our doorsteps!
However, we must admit that none of the conference delegates were considering the presence of driverless heavy-duty trucks before many years.