More than 20 per cent of all accidents involving trucks take place in traffic queues or similar situations.
To deal with this, Volvo Trucks has developed a system called Automated Queue Assistance (AQuA) which helps the driver in slow-moving queues by taking control of the vehicle. The system was demonstrated this week during at the HAVEit Final Event in Gothenburg, Sweden.
HAVEit (Highly Automated Vehicles for Intelligent Transport) is an EU project whose purpose is the development of next-generation intelligent vehicles.
When a traffic queue builds up, the driver can choose whether or not to activate the system, which operates at low speeds. It is possible to retake manual control at any time. The driver is always ultimately responsible for the vehicle, so to ensure proper focus on the traffic a camera registers how attentive the driver is and issues an alert if it detects a lack of concentration.
Within the framework of the HAVEit project, Volvo has also developed an additional function known as Active Green Driving (AGD), which has thus far been tested in Volvo buses, as well as Brake-by-Wire technology, an entirely electro-mechanical braking system that has the potential for improving performance and stability during braking.
