TMC 21 Highlights

Electronic braking and bigger connector cables might replace what’s now used, experts say.

Truck experts at the TMC meeting in Cleveland in September pondered designs of future tractor-trailer electrical connections and electronic braking systems. They came to no consensus, but the discussions gave a sharp glimpse of equipment that might appear on big rigs in the next 10 years or so. The event also offered a glimpse into the transition from rearview mirrors to cameras.

TMC – the Technology & Maintenance Council of the American Trucking Associations – is composed of fleet managers and representatives of companies that build trucks and components that all truckers, including owner-operators, eventually use. So TMC members, along with government regulators, are likely to have a big say on future equipment decisions, which is why Land Line keeps eyes and ears on what they’re saying.

Can cameras replace rearview mirrors?

A driver’s world is filled with multiple images every minute, and how clear they are affects how well he pilots his truck. Forward vision is one thing, but for about a century what’s happening alongside and to the rear has been transmitted to a driver’s eyeballs and brain by mirrors mounted just outside the cab. The larger they got, the more they helped. Now advancing technology has brought cameras and video screens to augment and even replace those pieces of glass.

A demonstration tractor-trailer owned by Stoneridge, a Novi, Mich.-based maker of actuators and other electronic components for commercial vehicles, was presented at the Technology & Maintenance Council meeting. It was available for rides and drives by fleet managers and reporters. I did mine about noon on a partly sunny day, first observing how the MirrorEye camera-video screen system works, then driving the rig through downtown streets. We ran the Freightliner Cascadia and its 53-foot van trailer on a long, around-the-block route that included five right turns and a left turn. I started as a skeptic and ended a believer.

“We” included Mario Gefencu, a veteran professional driver who now manages the company’s four demo rigs. After I climbed aboard, he went through a well-practiced presentation describing the system.

It consists of three screens and five cameras: Two cameras are on each side near where side-view mirrors would be, and the fifth is above the right-side window. That one looks down toward the pavement and shows a very wide-angle view of the cab’s door and right fender, including the outside of the front wheel and tire, some of the saddle tank, and outward away from the cab. The camera covers the adjacent lane and one more to the right, totally eliminating the blind spot on the truck’s right side.

Objects are wildly exaggerated but still recognizable, and I could see everything to the right.

This camera’s images are projected on a small screen hung above the center of the windshield, like the rear-view mirror in your car.

The two large vertical screens on the cab’s A pillars are – to use a current cliché – your West Coast mirrors on steroids. The screens show mirrorlike images but larger and in crisp, high-definition color.

With those A-pillar screens, I felt far less anxious making a sharp right-hand turn with a 53-foot trailer than I am with traditional mirrors. The screen images are bigger and clearer and cover more area. Because the cameras automatically pan as a rig articulates, the trailer’s side, rear and tandem stayed in view as I brought it through each 90-degree maneuver. Camera panning is governed by the rig’s forward speed and the amount of spin in the steering gear, Gefencu explained. When backing, a driver must manually pan using a knob on the dash, but this would be automatic if sensors were installed to gauge the relative motion between tractor and trailer. This was a daytime experience, but the system has a night mode that compensates for lack of ambient light. I’d like to try that.

Can you legally eliminate external glass mirrors and use a camera-screen system instead? The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a waiver to Stoneridge for its testing and demonstrations, Gefencu said, and several fleets have gotten waivers to begin using the MirrorEye system.

Connecting trailer to tractor

A session on tractor-trailer connectivity focused on the sending of data from increasingly complex trailers to tractors, where telematics equipment can forward the data to managers. The session was set up as a mock debate between those who favor new-tech methods of communication and those who want the two vehicles to remain hard-wired together. Three people on each side made their points within traditional time constraints followed by gentlemanly rebuttals – no name calling here, because they were friends and the stakes at this time are theoretical rather than “it’s my way or the highway.”

Those who want a physical connection retained between tractor and trailer said they do not trust wireless methods because anything sent over the air can be hacked by criminal geeks who harbor harmful or just mischievous intent. The current seven-pin electrical connector is at its limit in the amount of information and electrical power it can handle, this side noted, but they also did not want a second connector added (even though some operators already use one, and in Europe three or more cables are employed by some operators).

Today’s seven-way connector is actually 70 years old, having gone into service in 1951 following adoption by the Society of Automotive Engineers, which labeled it J560.

There are additional connector types in use, among them the 11- and 13-pin hardware adopted by the International Standards Organization, better known as ISO, and a “NATO 12-pin” design, used on military vehicles by countries that are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Any of these have more capacity than our venerable “seven-way,” but their pins are smaller and more fragile and thus more easily bent or broken than a seven-way’s hefty prongs, the keep-it-connected side said.

The proponents of wireless methods noted that some owners will want the trailer to function even while standing alone, with no tractor nearby. How else can that be done unless information from its various systems can be transmitted directly to the owner’s home office? Among the information wanted are doors open or closed, reefer operation, temperature and status of the load, even camera signals. Info on the trailer’s own equipment includes brake wear and tire pressures, suspension condition, and, when the trailer’s moving, heat and vibrations in wheel hubs. Very little of that info is now captured by sensors. Drivers do it.

However, trailers have begun getting such equipment and the information they produce is useless unless it’s observed, interpreted and acted on. Among transmittal methods are cell, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and wireless local-network broadcasting. Audience members voted on which way – wireless or with a cable – via email or texting, and Robert Braswell, TMC’s executive director and the debate’s moderator, declared a draw.

Electronic brakes coming

Stand-alone trailers are more likely, even when being pulled by tractors, if air brakes are replaced by electronic braking systems, speakers at the second session said. Through piping and valving, compressed air now signals and actuates brakes on Class 8 trailers as drivers step on their brake pedals. With electronic braking, electrical impulses would signal and operate the brakes on trailer wheels, and service brakes would be applied and released by solenoids and motors. Electronic braking is quicker, so vehicles with electronic braking systems – sometimes referred to as “brake by wire” – can stop heavy combination vehicles as much as 25% faster, one rep said.

No air system on the trailer means no air-line connectors (good bye, blue and red coiled hoses!), no air hoses hanging under the trailer frame, and, if mechanical suspensions (rather than air bags) were used, no need for air at all, at least on some trailer types. Braking signals from the tractor might be sent via a secure physical connector or encrypted wireless system. An electronic brakes-equipped tractor might also dispense with an air system, but once again, air suspensions might also disappear. Is that progress?

Electronic braking systems could be fully electric, as described above.

Or it could use electronic signaling and air actuation, where compressed air is the force that applies shoes or pads, as now. Reps from suppliers in Europe and North America said multiple systems are under development, and one or more could be adopted. Federal Safety Standard 121 now requires pneumatic brakes on heavy tractors and trailers, but some trailers have been built with EBS while keeping an air-brake system as backup. Whatever method is eventually picked, there will be a transition period when tractors and trailers would have to use both old and new equipment so they could still work together.

As for electric power, trailers could conceivably generate their own, perhaps with solar panels or an axle-driven alternator, both using batteries to store electricity, one speaker noted. Then lights and other equipment wouldn’t need power from the tractor, which would only tow the trailer. Powered landing gear and auto-coupling and uncoupling could be employed if the tractor were driverless. That’s a whole other subject, but the future could be scary. LL