ERTICO’s transport and logistics roadmap for 2030 envisions an increase in interoperability, connectivity and the digitalisation and automation of transport operations. ERTICO’s goal is to achieve seamless logistics and freight transport by them and, nearer to 2025, achieve full digitalisation and automation of freight and logistics operations. To this end, ENSEMBLE, one of ERTICO’s flagship projects, is working to foster the integration of collaborative strategies in logistics and truck platooning.
ENSEMBLE – ENabling SafE Multi-Brand pLatooning for Europe is paving the way for the adoption of multi-brand truck platooning in Europe. The ambition of this project is to realise pre-standards for interoperability between trucks, platoons and logistics solution providers, to speed up market pick-up of (sub)system development and implementation and to enable harmonisation of legal frameworks in the Member States. The project has defined two different ways of platooning: platooning as a support function and platooning as autonomous function.
ERTICO collaborated with TNO, the consortium leader, six European truck manufacturers (DAF, DAIMLER, IVECO, MAN, SCANIA and VOLVO Group), suppliers supporting OEMS (NXP, ZF, Bosch, Continental, Brembo) and associations and research organisation (CLEPA, IDIADA, Université Gustave Eiffel, KTH and VU Brussel) to share knowledge and develop a common ground for further standardisation. Significant advances in platooning technology have been made in the last decade but the integral multi-brand approach is necessary and it ultimately requires cooperative automation.
In September 2021 in Barcelona, a real-life presentation on truck platooning support function was exhibited. On this occasion, seven differently branded trucks drove in platoons under real-life traffic conditions!
Discover more about the communication protocols and how a platoon effectively works by visiting the ENSEMBLE website and reading the latest article. Videos are also available on the ERTICO YouTube profile. In the ENSEMBLE playlists, you can find the recordings of the past events, the public demonstration in Barcelona and also the recording of the latest online summary and Q&A session of the public demonstration. After over three years of numerous tests and shared efforts from the partners, the ENSEMBLE project will come to an end in 2022. On March 17th in Antwerp, Belgium, the final impact results and findings will be presented.
Stay tuned and monitor the ENSEMBLE website and the LinkedIn group to follow the upcoming events!
