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48 opportunity to boost productivity in both the port sector and the trucking industry. It will also open up opportunities for truck drivers to take on higher skilled roles as fleet operators and managers.” The trials will take place in two phases. The first will focus on designing, testing and refining the truck platooning technology to adapt to local conditions. These will be conducted by Scania and Toyota at their respective research centres in Sweden and Japan. The second phase will consist of local trials and development of the technology in Singapore. The technology will come from the Companion European research project, where Scania is working with Ericsson on using low-latency 5G cellular links to the lead vehicle with 802.11p wireless links in the platoon. Scania has three early-stage 5G wireless base stations at its research centre in Sweden. “The test network with its 5G components allows for a high-quality mobile network service, with low latency and high bandwidth, where a lot of complex data can be transferred quickly and reliably,” says Anders Ställberg of Scania. “That provides us with a ‘priority communications lane’ for projects such as autonomous driving and platooning.” The low latency (which Ericsson’s tests has shown to be less than 3 ms) allows 5G to be used for vehicles transmitting braking or directional information to each other, where speed and reliability are vital. It could also be used to help improve the reliability and speed of the exchange of the information between the two or more vehicles in a truck platoon. Commercial 5G services that could be used by the platoons will roll out in 2018. Delivery systems Starship Technologies has teamed up with Mercedes-Benz to develop ‘Robovan’ – a van that carries a fleet of eight autonomous robots for short- distance delivery services. The semi-autonomous transportation system will see Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans act as ’motherships’, hosting eight delivery robots. The vans will drive through neighbourhoods, stopping in designated locations, based on delivery density and demand, to drop off and pick up robots to complete customer deliveries. The robots are loaded with goods in the Robovan using a racking system that enables 400 packages to be delivered every nine-hour shift, compared with 180 packages using previously available methods, an increase of more than 120%. “Vans are best suited to bring goods to the local area from businesses and distribution centres,” says Ahti Heinla of Starship Technologies. Instead of completing door-to-door delivery, the vans will drive to pre-agreed locations to load and unload goods, and then dispatch the robots in the final step for February/March 2017 | Unmanned Systems Technology The test network with its 5G components allows for a high- quality mobile service, with low latency and high bandwidth Scania is planning the first commercial truck platooning system on public roads in Singapore (Courtesy of Scania)