Volkswagen, Telekom, Unikie and BIBA wrap up AutoLog automated vehicle logistics project in Emden
Volkswagen and three partners have finished testing self-driving vehicle movements at a logistics site near the port of Emden, mixing automated and manually driven cars in daily operations.
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- 5G
- ISO 23374
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What Happened
Volkswagen, Deutsche Telekom, Unikie and BIBA have concluded the AutoLog innovation project, ending the joint testing phase of automated vehicle logistics in Emden. The test site sits in a logistics area close to the port of Emden and includes parking areas, driving routes and a busy roundabout, which let the partners investigate a range of traffic situations. A particular focus was the interaction between automated and manually driven vehicles during ongoing logistics operations, and how to integrate the technology into existing workflows. The insights gained are intended to inform further development of automated logistics processes and provide a basis for assessing additional applications.
- The Unikie Marshalling Solution (UMS) provides overall control and coordination of the vehicles.
- A digital representation of the parking areas supports planning and coordination of vehicle movements.
- Deutsche Telekom's public 5G network, enhanced with additional capabilities, handles communication between the system and the vehicles.
- The UMS runs on an edge cloud system, with data processed via a high-speed, dedicated fiber-optic connection close to the cellular network to meet requirements for time-critical applications.
For the system to work, vehicle technology, environment perception, communications infrastructure and logistics software had to work together reliably. Other areas of focus included standardised communication and safe interaction between people and technology. AutoLog is guided by the ISO 23374 standard for Automated Valet Parking and investigates how automated vehicles can be integrated into complex logistics environments, including interaction with people and other road users and coordination with existing logistics processes.
“AutoLog demonstrates the potential of automated driving for our logistics operations. For us, the key is not just to develop new technologies under laboratory conditions, but to test their practical suitability where our logistics operations take place every day. Together with our partners in Emden, we have gained valuable insights into how vehicle movements can be automated more intelligently and logistics processes further developed in the future. We intend to draw on this experience as we continue to develop the technology.”
“AutoLog demonstrates how industry-ready connectivity can form the digital backbone for automated processes throughout vehicle logistics. The combination of low-latency, reliable connectivity, edge infrastructure, and intelligent vehicle control creates the technical foundation for scaling automated vehicle distribution from the end of the production line via rail and ship to the end customer.”
“In Emden, we have demonstrated that automated vehicle movements can be tested even in a demanding logistics environment with mixed traffic. The interaction of our marshalling solution with the existing infrastructure and manually driven vehicles is an important step. The experience gained helps us to further develop the technology and assess its commercial readiness to other logistics environments.”
Work on automating vehicle movements is also underway elsewhere in the Volkswagen Group. As part of a collaboration between the AutoLog project and Audi's Ingolstadt site, the project partners tested the automated loading of vehicles onto rail wagons, focusing on precisely positioning vehicles as they are transferred to rail transport. That successful pilot adds another use case to the experience gained in Emden and shows the range of tasks along the logistics chain that can be redesigned through automated driving. In the long term, automated vehicle movements could help make logistics workflows more flexible, safer and more sustainable while opening up new ways of organising vehicle transport within plant and terminal areas.
Why this matters
The project matters for anyone who follows how vehicles get from the end of the production line to the customer: automated movements could make those workflows more flexible, safer and more sustainable. It also affects the workers and logistics partners who share space with these vehicles, since the tests focused on how people and automated cars interact. Volkswagen says it will draw on the experience as it develops the technology further.
Terms in This Story
- Automated Valet Parking
- A driving-automation function in which a vehicle moves itself, without a driver aboard, into and out of a parking space or parking area.
- ISO 23374
- An international standard that sets out requirements for Automated Valet Parking systems, so different suppliers' systems can work to a common baseline.
- 5G
- The fifth generation of mobile cellular networks, designed to carry data with low delay and high reliability, which matters for controlling machines remotely.
- Edge cloud
- Cloud computing capacity placed physically close to where the data is generated, so results come back fast enough for time-critical applications.
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