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Digital Driving
Freightliner, Meritor Unveil High-Tech Safety Devices
By Tom Berg
Stay in your lane, buddy! And look, ma, no clutch pedal! Those were the messages from two builders' product announcements during the ATA convention in Orlando last October. Freightliner Corp. showed off its Lane Guidance feature and two other devices, and ZF Meritor LLC displayed its FreedomLine automated mechanical transmission with an automated clutch. How do they work as you drive?
Freightliner's Lane Guidance
Freightliner's Lane Guidance system uses a minicam to monitor a truck's position in its lane and buzzes a warning if it seems to be meandering. The device almost always says something if the truck wanders this way or that, as I found out while driving a demo tractor out of a hotel complex and onto a boulevard, headed toward Interstate 4 near Disney World.
The first time I deviated from my lane, the low-pitched blatting seemed to come from beneath the passenger's seat, occupied by Jim Tipka, Freightliner's chief test engineer. The tone is supposed to resemble the rumbling your tires make as they hit the grooves cast perpendicularly in the shoulders of some interstate highways. But it sounded like something else.
I quickly pulled the truck to the left, back toward the center of the lane we were in, then looked at Tipka. "I was going to ask you if you passed wind," I grinned, "but didn't want to be indelicate."
"You're being very nice," he laughed, as though agreeing with my assessment of the audio. Of course, the noise had not come from his seat, but from the speaker in the headliner to his right. If I wandered left, as I did soon after, Lane Guidance's warning came from the speaker near my left ear. My instinct was to steer the truck away from the buzzing, fulfilling the system's mission.
Lane Guidance's "eye," the small video camera, is suctioned onto the top-center of the Freightliner Century S/T's windshield. Tipka explained that the camera looks for painted lane markers to the left and right. Its electronics package, mounted in the headliner above the windshield, considers what the camera sees and compares it with the apparent width of the lane. It interprets it all, and if the truck seems headed left or right, sends the warning tone to the appropriate speaker.
The electronic brain also recognizes contrasts in color and texture, but it doesn't understand everything. This leads to false alarms. While I followed a spiraling ramp onto I-4, the camera mistook a concrete wall for another lane that I appeared to be heading toward, and beeped at me. And it sometimes beeped when the camera saw variations in pavement color in a converging lane.
"If it happens too much you can always turn it off," Tipka said of the false audibles. But turn it back on when pavement markers become more steady and predictable. I think I'd want it on when expressway lanes are narrow, to avoid encroaching on traffic alongside. And for sure I'd use it when I'm tired and am most likely to meander. That's when Lane Guidance is most likely to help.
The audible warnings resemble those of the Eaton Vorad proximity warning device, which has been available for several years and has proven itself as an accident reducer. Lane Guidance will be an option later this year in the Century S/T, like the tractor I was driving, and other highway models, including Sterling's SilverStar.
ZF Meritor's FreedomLine AMT
You'll wait somewhat longer for ZF Meritor's FreedomLine AMT. But it's so slick that the wait may be worth it. The transmission not only shifts itself, but also clutches and declutches automatically. It is the first product resulting from the joint venture between America's Meritor Automotive and Germany's ZF Freidrichshafen.
ZF Meritor has two versions, a 12-speed and a 16-speed, installed in two highway tractors. They let reporters and prospective customers drive them, and everyone seemed impressed with their smoothness and ability to shrug off any miscues from drivers. You really can "put it in D and drive," as arch-rival Eaton says of its AutoShift, but more so, because there's no clutch pedal to punch.
ZF Meritor promises that its FreedomLine will work well because it's got three years of service behind it. It is a North Americanized version of the "Astronic" that ZF has been selling in Europe since 1996. It will be built in South Carolina starting sometime this fall, and Meritor marketers think it will cost only $5,000 or so more than a straight manual (but they caution that truck builders set the final prices).
The FreedomLine is easy to drive. You climb in, start the engine, let air come up, release the brakes and turn the rotary transmission selector from N to D. It quietly declutches and shifts into gear. You step on the accelerator, the clutch engages smoothly and the rig moves out. You can either let it shift itself, or use a joystick-like lever to nudge the transmission into an up- or downshift, and can control all shifts if you want.
Both rigs had loaded trailers and gross weights were in the mid-70,000s. The readout on the dash said the 12-speed, installed in a Volvo VN, started out in 3rd gear, while the 16-speed, in a Freightliner Century, began in 4th — higher ratios than I'd have used even on the level — yet there was no clutch chatter at all.
The trannies skip-shifted as they went up their ratio ladders, from 3rd to 5th and so on in the 12-speed and from 4th to 7th in the 16-speed. Because they shifted quickly, the engines easily picked up the load each time. In high range, the transmissions' electronic brain used more gears.
The Volvo's soft springing allowed engine torque to hop its front end as the first few lower gears engaged, but this quickly smoothed out. The Freightliner didn't hop. In each case, someone outside would think the driver was really good at going through the gears because the engine revved and dropped for the faint clunking of the gear changes, then continued accelerating or decelerating. So the FreedomLine sounds like a manual but shifts like an automatic.
It seems idiotproof. I tried to make the 12-speed malfunction, but couldn't. Several times I went into manual mode, controlling the gear changing by pulling or pushing the joystick-like gearshift. It did what I told it to, but I often found myself in a gear too high or low for a situation.
"Why screw with it?" laughed Jimmy Blitz, a former fleet manager and now sales consultant for ZF Meritor, who demo'd the 12-speed version in the Volvo. "You're too old for that! Let it do the work."
It did, and flawlessly — upshifting, downshifting, even refusing to shift at all if I demanded a change under the wrong circumstances, like twisting the selector knob from Drive to Reverse while we were still rolling forward. It always seemed to pick the correct gear. One exception is while drifting downgrade (not that there are many hills in Florida), and maybe there's a red light at the bottom of the hill. Freedom's brain can't see that and will let the engine loaf, but you can call for a downshift to raise engine revs and get more retarding power from the Jake Brake.
Another neat, manually induced move is a smooth shift between low and high ranges — in reverse. Yeah, lots of guys can do that on a Roadranger, but the FreedomLine will do it better when you tell it to. You can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes in the mirror, watching where the truck or trailer's going.
No, you wouldn't want to back into a dock at 20 mph in high range-reverse. But you can backtrack quickly down a deserted street, or easily move a dump-truckload of asphalt to the paving machine.
FreedomLine's clutch works smoothly every time, and it works a lot. That's because FreedomLine double-clutches for each gear change, unlike the Eaton AutoShift and Meritor's own SureShift, which float-shift without disengaging the clutch. You can't feel it and can't hear it, even though the clutch is air operated. This raises the question of how long the clutch facing will last, but Blitz thinks it'll be longer than clutches in most fleet trucks, where driver skill can be uncertain.
Not that we're questioning your skill, especially if you're an owner/operator and value your equipment. Even if you enjoy going through the gears, I'm betting you're gonna like this thing simply because it works so smoothly all the time, even when you're tired and can't be as smooth as you'd want. You can quit worrying about shifting and keep your mind on the road and the traffic.
More Electronics, Plus a Hunk of Iron
Freightliner's list of electronic devices grows with the introduction of Roll Advisor & Control, an expanded Data Logging Unit and a Truck Productivity Computer. These will join the Lane Guidance system among Freightliner and Sterling options later this year.
A piece of good ol' iron is also new: the CamLaster Brake. This is a drum brake with an integral adjuster, doing away with the external automatic slack adjuster that's now part of S-cam brakes. The internal adjuster is sealed and lubricated for life; its rod stroke is similar to an S-cam's, so safety inspectors should not be confused on that issue. The CamLaster, made by Meritor, resembles a wedge brake, but avoids the wedge's complexity and maintenance hassles, Freightliner people say. CamLaster linings should last 500,000 miles in OTR service, eliminating periodic relining work for the first three to five years of a tractor's life.
The electronic Roll Advisor & Control system uses the anti-lock braking system's electronics package to monitor a truck or tractor's suspension, detecting when lateral forces are getting severe. On a dash display it first warns, "Risky Maneuver Detected," and suggests a slower speed. If the danger persists, it says, "Rollover Risk Detected" and again asks the driver to slow down. The third alert reads, "High Risk of Rollover Detected," and an alarm sounds.
If a rollover is imminent, the system signals the engine to cut power and applies the brakes. This reduces the forces leading to the threatened rollover. Such accidents kill about 350 truck drivers a year, Freightliner says, and often kill or injure nearby motorists.
The Data Logging Unit (DLU) on-board recorder, first introduced in 1995 on the Century, has been expanded to store more information on speed, temperatures, pressures, odometer readings and throttle positions. It stores info automatically and also when prompted by the driver. For instance, if the engine falters intermittently, the driver pushes a button when it happens and the DLU stores info. This lets a technician later see what the engine was doing, eliminating those maddening instances where the tech can't fix it because "nothing's wrong now."
Beginning with trucks built in January, DLUs record info leading up to an accident that deploys the airbag (now standard on the Century S/T and optional on other models). As in an aircraft's flight recorder, engine and braking data will be available for analysis so the truck's owner can get a good idea of what the driver was doing before the wreck. Because most truck-car crashes are the motorist's fault, this will legally protect the trucker in most cases.
The Truck Productivity Computer is an AM-FM-CD radio that does a lot more than play music. It's an on-board computer with a 166-MHz microprocessor running Windows CE that ties into engine and chassis electronics via a standard serial port. It also includes a vehicle info display; a wireless communications terminal that lets the driver send and receive messages to and from headquarters; a global positioning system display; and yes, a multi-band radio whose CD player also lets the driver load software. It can do so much that drivers may have to be trained on how to use everything, executives admit.
Freightliner will offer two versions of the Truck Productivity Computer: one that fits in a standard radio slot, and a larger one with an alpha-numeric keyboard for expanded functions. One model or the other will be offered on certain Freightliner and Sterling trucks, and as an aftermarket unit for installation in other truck makes. All have large knobs and buttons for easy use while going down the road.
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