Highly automated truck trial

Australia’s first on-road automated truck trial

This 2022 automated truck trial tested the performance of an automated truck on urban motorways (including our CityLink) in Melbourne.

The trial was the first time a highly automated truck (a truck designed to drive without driver input) was tested in live traffic conditions on public motorways in Australia.

The 2022 trial was also the first time we tested the benefits of sharing our roadside technology data (for example, from our road sensors and speed-limit signage) with a truck’s automated driving system (ADS). (The ADS is the technology that drives the truck). 

Real-time data from Transurban systems was fed directly to the truck, and we measured how well this data helped the truck’s ADS understand road and traffic conditions beyond the reach of its own sensor data.

The trial findings helped Transurban—and our government and industry partners—better understand how roads and road technology can be leveraged to support automated trucks joining the mix of vehicles already on our roads. They also served as a step on the path to our current automated truck trial. 

Findings

Trial results suggested well-instrumented managed motorways with mid-to-high freight volumes will be ideal candidates for early automated truck deployments. These roadways have enough freight demand to attract automated truck operators and enough instrumentation to generate infrastructure data to support the automated trucks.

We found integrating our road-infrastructure data into the ADS enabled safer on-road deployment of the automated truck. For example, instead of training the ADS to read LED signs along the road, we provided a data feed that gave the ADS direct and reliable access to the information typically conveyed by signs along the motorway.

All up, the truck travelled around 370 km with its automated driving system (ADS) engaged.

Our Transurban Insights: Automated Truck Trial report provides more details on the trial and our findings.