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| What is a vehicle platoon? |
| It’s a road train with vehicles, where vehicles are autonomously following a manually driven lead vehicle, driven by a professional driver. |
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| What is SARTRE? |
| An EU-financed project, with seven partners from four countries in Europe, discovering the possibilities with vehicle platoons on public highways. The project started on 1st September 2009 and aims to complete by end August 2012. |
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| What is the Project Budget? |
| €6.4m with around 60% of this being provided by the European Commission FP7 programme. |
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| Who are involved in the project? |
It’s an EU financed project with following participating partners:
• Ricardo UK Ltd (UK)
• Volvo Technology (Sweden)
• SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden
• Applus+ IDIADA (Spain)
• Tecnalia (Spain)
• IKA (Germany)
• Volvo Cars (Sweden). |
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| Why are you researching about vehicle platoons? |
Platooning has the potential to address three key societal challenges;
• Environment - 10-20% anticipated saving
• Safety - Driver is no 1 contributor to road fatalities being the primary cause 87% of the time and contributor 95% of the time. With reduced driver control increased safety can be achieved
• Reduced congestion – increased traffic stability
In addition there is added convenience for the drivers of the following vehicles, allowing use of their travel time for other activities. |
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| Which are the major project challenges? |
| There are a lot of challenges being analyzed in the project. One of them is seeking to identify an appropriate length of platoon, for good interaction with surrounding traffic. Very long road trains can block exits to slipways for other vehicles. |
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| Is the idea of road platoons suitable for country roads and motorways only or they are also possible in cities? |
| At the moment we are focussing on Motorways only. There are additional complexities when you consider country roads and cities (e.g. pedestrians). |
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| Is there a need for any infrastructure changes before introducing platoons on public roads? |
| No, we are aiming to have a system that doesn’t require infrastructure changes. |
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| How about safety of the platoon? Have you already made any simulations of inevitable accidents and response of the vehicles in the platoon? |
| We are completing a safety analysis which will lead to safety requirements. We obviously have a goal to be as safe as the existing road system – If not safer. |