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- [Narrator] Autonomous vehicles
are already a reality on Texas roadways.
Automated freight technologies,
such as autonomous trucks and platoon trucks,
promise increased safety and significant cost savings.
But until now, little was known
about the effects these new technologies
will have on transportation infrastructure.
The Texas Department of Transportation
and researchers with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute
have developed a tool that will help transportation planners
predict and minimize adverse impacts
of these new trucking technologies.
- The technology behind autonomous truck control
is very precise.
It's almost like running the trucks on rails.
They're so precise.
And this means that we are going to have some more cracking
and more running with everything being the same
compared to traditional traffic.
And what the TxDOT wanted
was to be able to run a number of different scenarios
in terms of, okay, what are the different implications
for different parts of the infrastructure
by introducing autonomous and connected trucks
on Texas Highways?
- Basically this project was an outgrowth
of a prior project, TxDOT Project 0-6984.
That project was completed in 2020,
and we looked at the impacts potentially
that automated and platoon trucks could have
on the TxDOT freight infrastructure,
primarily the roadways in the Texas Highway Freight Network.
This project took what we found in that prior project
and tried to put it into the development of a new tool,
a web-based tool that could be used by planners at TxDOT
and/or other planters so that they could quickly look
at a variety of scenarios
to identify impacts of bridges, pavements, flooding,
or weather impacts on different types of soils
throughout the state.
And then also the economic impacts
of these new types of truck technologies.
- By understanding the cost
and the impact of these autonomous trucks
on different aspects of the TxDOT's infrastructure,
we anticipate where to harden the infrastructure,
and we can actually recommend which hardening options
are most beneficial to reducing any negative impact
and maximizing positive impacts.
So this simply gives TxDOT
the ability now to fairly seamlessly identify ways
to harden infrastructure in a cost-effective manner
that also enables more effective and efficient truck traffic
and freight mobility across Texas.
- We think implementation, obviously, as an online tool,
there continues to be improvements that could be made.
We think we've got it to an operational standpoint.
We need to develop and continue to work with TxDOT
through an implementation project
to do some further training and development
to get this where it's actually in use
throughout the department.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.