In the first 22 months, the project funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection has already made significant progress. "With ATLAS-L4, an autonomously driving truck will soon be on the road on a freeway in Germany for the first time," explains Dr. Frederik Zohm, Executive Board Member for Research and Development at MAN Truck & Bus. "In this way, we want to contribute to hub-to-hub automation, i.e. driverless commuting between logistics yards, and thus to greater safety, more efficiency and less congestion on the roads. Automation concepts can also counteract the driver shortage."

What has been achieved since the start of the project?
The project partners recently presented the results of their work to date at a project event in Munich. MAN Truck & Bus, which is responsible for overall system development, has developed a prototype of an autonomous truck equipped with sensors on the roof, front and sides of the driver's cab as well as internal computers. This vehicle will initially serve as a sensor vehicle for data acquisition before being used for functional tests of autonomous driving, including initial test drives on the highway with a safety driver. The vehicle has already successfully completed its first kilometers at the MAN test site in Munich, where the functionalities and interfaces were tested. The components were able to communicate with each other for the first time and the sensors were able to perform realistic environment detection for the first time, while the subsystems relevant to safety for the Level 4 architecture, such as the on-board network, the steering and the redundant braking system, have also been designed and successfully tested in the first prototype stands. Another important step was the commissioning of the Control Center for technical supervision in September. This facility enables the vehicle to be monitored and displays all relevant information, such as speed and automation status, on a map via a web interface.

MAN and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security AISEC successfully carried out a risk analysis for the vehicle during the project. Based on this analysis, extensive cyber security and functional security measures were developed, including authentic and encrypted communication as well as redundancies and degradation concepts for the autonomous driving system. Numerous attack and failure scenarios were run through and corresponding protection concepts developed.

The next steps
The next important milestone will be the premiere on public roads. The test vehicle is expected to take to the highway for the first time in 2023, naturally with a safety driver on board. All these steps are part of the long-term goal of ATLAS-L4, namely to enable the use of level 4 automated and thus driverless trucks on the highway. This lays the foundation for future series applications and the implementation of Logistics 4.0, supported by the strong ATLAS-L4 consortium. The project will run until December 2024 and, at the end, an industry-ready concept for the use of automated trucks on the highway will have been developed.