Autonomous trucks: the future of goods transportation

Can you imagine driverless trucks transporting your goods? Well, autonomous trucks could be a not too distant future for DB and MAN. After a positive mid-term review, the two companies have now announced at the first public drive that everything would be ready to test autonomously driving trucks in everyday operation at the rail-road terminal in Ulm from next September.  

DB and MAN, together with the project partners Götting and the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences, had planned test drives for a whole year. This ensured that the autonomous prototype was confronted with reality as often as possible along the gradual development and optimisation. Now the preparations for test drives in real regular operation have been completed and the joint automation project ANITA (Autonomous Innovation in Terminal Operations) can start its next phase. These are intensive practical and development runs at the container depot of DB Intermodal Services and the DUSS terminal (Deutsche Umschlaggesellschaft Schiene-Straße mbH) in Ulm Dornstadt. However, the permanent presence of a security driver on board is still planned, who could intervene if necessary.  

In the coming months, the electronic senses of the autonomous truck in the real operational environment as well as its ability to communicate with the infrastructure of the terminal will also be sharpened. To this end, the scientists at the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences have analysed the existing processes, procedures and behaviours of people and machines on site and transferred them into a digital set of rules. In this way, the autonomous truck will be able to react to the impulses from the environment like a real driver and fulfil its transport task in container handling.  

The announced goal of ANITA is to stabilise container transport in its operational processes and thus make it more efficient, more plannable and at the same time more flexible. Digitalisation and automation help to optimise the transfer of goods from road to rail. The combination of rail and road transport is "the environmentally friendly solution for the logistics of the future", explains Sigrid Nikutta, responsible for freight transport at Deutsche Bahn and CEO of DB Cargo.  

For the logistics industry to actually become more environmentally friendly, however, not only the ANITA project must succeed. Other companies should also dare to take the step and invest time, resources and expertise in research for combined freight transport. Then goods and commodities will finally travel greener.