Both Cadillac and Daimler Trucks are putting new connected vehicle technologies to the test on U.S. roads.
Cadillac has a dozen vehicles on the road that began a journey from New York City to California this week. The CT6 models have “Super Cruise,” a hands-free highway driving system for limited-access, divided highways, and represent the company’s first foray into hands-free autonomy for vehicles. Cadillac was granted a special license for the vehicles to operate on highways in New York, under a new autonomous vehicle testing law that was enacted earlier this year to facilitate development of such vehicles.
Daimler, meanwhile, said this week that it is testing “platooning” of connected trucks — advanced driver support systems that allow vehicles to follow each other more closely than is typical — on some highways in Nevada and Oregon. Daimler Trucks first tested the vehicles at its proving ground in Oregon and is now taking them on the road, starting in pairs of connected trucks. The platooning relies on Wi-Fi-based vehicle-to-vehicle interactions between the driver assistance systems such as braking, with reaction times around 0.2 to 0.3 seconds compared to human reaction times of around 1 second, according to Daimler.
The director of product planning for Volvo Trucks, Keith Brandis, told Trucks.com that Volvo has seen platooning result in 10% or more improvement in fuel efficiency for the second and third trucks in a platoon — but testing can still be an issue because it isn’t legal to test such systems in all states and special permission is often required.
Connected vehicle-related testing is expected to reach $293 million million by 2023, according to a recent report from Frost & Sullivan. The analyst firm has estimated that the test equipment market for passenger vehicle automotive telematics testing is going to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9% until 2023, at which point it will be worth nearly $293 million. Frost also recently posited that manufacturers “need to look beyond seeing themselves as product suppliers and focus on becoming providers of mobility services”, and some are moving ahead with doing so: Mercedes-Benz introduced its own vehicle plug-in for fleet management connectivity this week, available for European markets, and says it plans to offer additional services based on that solution.
Test equipment support for vehicle-to-vehicle communications continues to expand as well. Anritsu this week announced what it says is an industry first: V2X 802.11p evaluation software for V2X communications analysis that supports standards used in the U.S., Europe and Japan.
In other test news:
–Keysight Technologies collaborated with reverberation chamber company Bluetest to develop a new narrowband IoT over-the-air testing solution based on Keysight’s UXM test set, that is compatible with Bluetest chambers and being used by a top operator in Japan.
Keysight also this week touted some of its successes in supporting 5G and IoT development in China. The company said that it has aided in the successful completion of interoperability development tests as part of the second phase of China’s IMT-2020 trials of 5G technologies. Partners in the testing included Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, Datang and Nokia Shanghai Bell. Keysight’s equipment was also chosen for the China Mobile Research Institute’s testing for cellular IoT technology development.
–PCTel launched a new offering for indoor public safety network grid testing. The feature, part of PCTel’s SeeHawk Touch software for tablets, supports both customer reporting and pre-configured reporting for common public safety coverage requirement which are based on International Fire Code or National Fire Protection Association. The company said that it can cut testing and report generation time by up to 70%.
–Rohde & Schwarz focused on geolocation with the launch of a high-end Global Navigation Satellite System simulation test solution,which has the ability to generate complex scenarios with internal noise generation and can be extended to up to four radio frequency outputs in order to test applications such as autonomous vehicles or aircraft positioning.
–Siborg Systems launched a new digital multimeter for printed circuit board debugging.
–Sifos Technologies introduced a new tester for power over Ethernet.
-Semiconductor testing company Aehr Test Systems reported that its net sales for the quarter ended Aug. 31st were up 31% year-over-year to $7 million. The company had a net profit of $10,000 for the quarter, up from a loss of $755,000 during the same period last year.
–Telenor is opening a new internet of things-focused lab in Norway. Read the full story here.
–John Morris Group will represent MTS’ full test and measurement line in Australia, after a long-standing relationship with the company on its PCB sensors products.
Follow me on Twitter! @khillrcr
