Skip to main content

Ricardo contributes to European truck platooning project

UK engineering and environmental consultancy Ricardo has lent its expertise to the first European Truck Platooning Challenge of the EcoTwin project, commencing in Westerlo, Belgium. Led by the Netherlands, the European Truck Platooning Challenge will involve various brands of automated trucks driving in platoons on public highways from several European cities to the Netherlands. The aim of the Challenge is to bring truck platooning one step closer to implementation, with the vision that it could soon be
April 6, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
UK engineering and environmental consultancy 5606 Ricardo has lent its expertise to the first European Truck Platooning Challenge of the EcoTwin project, commencing in Westerlo, Belgium.

Led by the Netherlands, the European Truck Platooning Challenge will involve various brands of automated trucks driving in platoons on public highways from several European cities to the Netherlands. The aim of the Challenge is to bring truck platooning one step closer to implementation, with the vision that it could soon become a reality in Europe.

For the EcoTwin project, Ricardo used a range of functional safety standards considered to be the most relevant for autonomous transport systems. Based upon these existing standards, Ricardo outlined and supported the safety approach for the EcoTwin project and analysed the risks and failure modes and compiled the evidence of the safe application of driverless solutions.

Subsequently, Ricardo provided support in meetings and discussions with RDW, the Netherlands Vehicle Authority, in the mobility chain as well as with ERTICO, a platform for the co-operation of all relevant stakeholders to develop and deploy intelligent transportation systems standards in Europe.

Related Content

  • March 24, 2021
    Ports are facing a digital sea-change
    Next-generation cellular will revolutionise the ports and maritime sector. Its arrival is just in time, as the industry faces a variety of challenges which require new technological solutions
  • February 10, 2014
    European cooperative logistics solutions project launched
    Ertico, together with 33 partners, has today launched the EU funded Co-Gistics project, a deployment activity that will unite logistics with cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS). This is the first time that a European project has been fully dedicated to deployment of cooperative services applied to logistics. to be piloted in seven of Europe’s leading logistics centres, Arad, Bordeaux, Bilbao, Frankfurt, Thessaloniki, Trieste and Vigo, Co-Gistics will target the needs of the freight indust
  • May 29, 2012
    Europe’s Sartre road train project takes to public roads
    A road train, comprised of three Volvo cars plus one truck automatically driving in convoy behind a lead vehicle, has operated on a public motorway among other road users. The historic test on a motorway outside Barcelona, Spain, took place last week and was pronounced a success. “This is a very significant milestone in the development of safe road train technology,” commented Sartre project director, Tom Robinson of Ricardo. “For the very first time we have been able to demonstrate a convoy of autonomousl
  • October 29, 2015
    Counting the environmental costs of ITS deployment
    David Crawford looks at the latest thinking about calculating the benefits associated with the environmental side of ITS schemes. The penny is dropping that some environmental costs “are being shifted outside the traditional bounds of evaluation methods” for ITS-based road transport projects, according to researchers at the UK University of Leeds’ Institute for Transport Studies.