China: Self-driving truck clears Navigation Test
Published On Apr 19, 2017
The world is going automated, so is the automobile industry. Moving towards a new era of automated run heavy vehicles, a Chinese made self-driving truck has cleared a navigation test. According to a report, FAW Jiefang, the leading truck manufacturer in the country has demonstrated a self-driving truck at the Tech Center of the company located in Changchun city of Jilin province.
During the test, the vehicle was able to identify obstacles, speed up and speed down, and took diversion. The automated vehicle intelligently responded to traffic lights, remote commands, cruise control and successfully passed all the parameters.
Company is planning to commercialize the vehicle next year and has developed a complete partnership to manufacture, sell and service these kinds of trucks. Hu Hanjie, FAW Jiefang General Manager also stated that as more and more companies participate in the sector, the technology will evolve more rapidly.
Many Chinese tech firms such as Baidu and Tencent are already been investing in the self-driving projects. Particularly Baidu has been testing their self-driving mini cars for the past couple of years at annual World Internet Conference. Experts believe that the automated driving technology in trucks will cut operational cost by either replacing the drivers completely or help the drivers to get rid of fatigue during long journeys.
The German heavy vehicle manufacturers are already working on automated technology for the past so many years. Daimler had showcased the self-driving truck named ‘Mercedes Benz Future Truck 2025’ a couple of years back with some of the state of the art technologies embedded into it. On the other hand, Volvo is also working on the autonomous trucking technology and is on the verge of launching a self-driving truck that will work in underground mines.
So, the coming five to ten years will be very crucial in the field of self-driving trucks.
