When drivers think of the Indiana Department of Transportation, it’s often associated with orange cones. After all, the agency is overseeing billions of dollars in road projects on the state’s highways. But it’s looking at future technologies, too.
Among them is truck automation, which includes something called platooning. A driver in a lead truck also steers the semi behind it.
Roland Fegan, INDOT’s deputy commissioner of construction, spoke recently about the downstate research as part of the Northwest Indiana Business Roundtable.
The research is being conducted along Interstate 70, in conjunction with Ohio, to create a truck automation corridor.
Fegan rode along to experience it himself. “The follower vehicle, what it feels like in that, is like you’re being towed,” he said. “Your senses are kind of funny in this.”
There’s a shortage of truck drivers nationally.
“The technology on this is rather incredible, but it is the modern era,” he said during the roundtable, held on Nov. 1 at Ivy Tech’s Valparaiso campus.
The American Trucking Association addressed the issue of autonomous commercial vehicles in a September 2023 blog post.
“Contrary to alarmist notions that drivers will be displaced by AVs, this driver-assist technology holds enormous potential to improve drivers’ productivity, safety, quality of life and job satisfaction,” the organization’s post said.
“The significance of National Truck Driver Appreciation Week is underscored by how in-demand these professionals are: The industry already faces a significant driver shortage, reaching a record-high 78,000 in 2022. We must hire 1.2 million new drivers over the next decade to fill retirements and keep pace with the nation’s growing demand for freight transportation,” it continued.
Fegan sees it from a public safety standpoint. “There’s a lot of safety components on this. Driver fatigue, it takes this out of it. It is the wave of the future,” he said.
Looking further into the future, Fegan predicts the autonomous vehicle program will involve controlling more than just the vehicle immediately following. “I think the longer-term goal is to platoon beyond two,” he said.
INDOT research also looks at electric vehicles. The agency plans to invest nearly $100 million in federal funds to build an EV charging network along Indiana’s alternative fuel corridors. Eventually, the charging stations would be no more than 50 miles apart along the interstates.
Even more intriguing, though, is a pilot project to develop and test an electrified roadway.
In partnership with ASPIRE Engineering Research Center, Purdue University, the Joint Transportation Research Program and Cummins, the roadway would directly charge vehicles while in motion.
Construction of a quarter-mile test segment on U.S. 52 at U.S. 231 in West Lafayette was to have been completed in September. Testing is set to bring next spring with a specialized Cummins vehicle.
The idea is to have transmitting coils and components embedded in the roadway and receiving components and coils underneath the vehicle.
Besides constructing the electrified roadway, there’s a significant hurdle in vehicle design to overcome for an electric truck to use it. The battery alone is 20,000 pounds, Fegan said.
Figuring that weight is one of the biggest destroyers of roadways, battery technology would have to improve dramatically to make this technology feasible as well as possible.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
