Bringing Safety and Comfort to the Future of Long-Haul Trucks
In 2017, there were approximately 1.9M police-reported motor vehicle accidents resulting in injury or fatality. A whopping 23% of accidents, involved long-haul or combination trucks. That might not be too surprising knowing that a fully-loaded tractor-trailer weighs in at approximately 40 tons and takes the length of nearly two football fields to come to a stop from 65 miles per hour.
Perceptive Automata’s mission is to reduce car-related fatalities by enabling automated systems to predict human behavior. We’re focused on solving one of the most challenging problems for automated vehicles — understanding the state of mind of humans in our road environment. Our AI software ingests data from on-vehicle sensors and, like humans, assesses in real-time the likely intention and awareness of pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers by reading visual cues such as eye contact, posture, physical orientation, and head movements. Increased safety is achieved through continuous 360-degree monitoring of human road users near the truck and, when warranted, signaling to the truck driver and on-board automated systems increased risk based on changes in human intention. This enables earlier preventive actions by the truck driver, supported by the truck’s automated systems, to reduce the likelihood of accidents and to help modulate the amount and severity of braking and acceleration.
To date, we’ve worked primarily on passenger vehicles. Given the high accident rates, trucks are a natural application of our technology.
This is precisely why we teamed up with Volvo Trucks and DHE.
We believe there’s a real opportunity for improved road safety, increased comfort, support for truck drivers, and improved economics for fleet operators — all afforded by advances in automation. A critical enabling capability for safely and smoothly moving freight and people, including augmenting the situational awareness of truck drivers, is to anticipate the behavior of pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists. We can bring the power of anticipation to trucks — and by doing so — help protect road users from harm.
Volvo Trucks’ culture of safety and DHE’s service excellence align with our vision for the future of automated trucking and advanced driver support, and this project showcased how automation technology can enhance the situational awareness of truck drivers to reduce cognitive load and driver fatigue, and, ultimately, save lives.
