Colorado DOT and partners to unveil self-driving work zone vehicle

This work zone vehicle has been designed to revolutionise safety for roadway maintenance crews. Usually positioned behind road construction crews in order to protect workers from the travelling public, the Autonomous Impact Protection Vehicle (AIPV) is a self-driving TMA truck that increases work zone safety by removing the driver from a truck that is designed to be hit. The launch will feature a demonstration of the AIPV in action during a live roadway striping operation!

The AIPV will follow a manned maintenance vehicle (the leader vehicle). The lead vehicle transmits position, speed and direction to the impact protection truck so it can follow in the leader vehicle’s exact path. The impact protection truck will also carry radar obstacle detection systems to detect anything unusual in their path and avoid collisions.

CDOT/RoadX is looking into equipping the AIPV with a dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) radio, turning the vehicle into a mobile DSRC Roadside Unit (RSU). This will allow the truck to send real-time information about its location, speed and direction to other “connected vehicles" and the Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Data network.

The launch takes place Friday, August 18 at 1:30 p.m. MST. Royal Truck & Equipment and CDOT will live-stream the AIPV demonstration at Royal’s and CDOT’s %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal Facebook page false http://facebook.com/royaltruckandequipment/&amp;%20facebook.com/coloradodot false false%>, Royal’s %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal Twitter page false http://twitter.com/RoyalTruckEquip false false%>, and %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal YouTube page false http://youtube.com/cdotmedia false false%>.