Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - February 2021 - 5

TRAXEN

TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS

and structure. And " we won't build every piece of middleware ourselves, "
Walliser added.
Another intriguing claim for middleware is its potential as a cybersecurity
component. ZF said it can provide
" state-of-the-art shielding of the vehicle
software environment from external
threats or manipulation. " Meanwhile, its
hardware and interface " abstractions "
help a vehicle to become agnostic to
the multiplicity of software and communications interfaces from individual
suppliers and developers.
In a separate interview with Truck &
Off-Highway Engineering, Hartmann
said a vital aspect of middleware includes its ability to be the intermediary
with a vehicle's overarching software
operating system, or OS - a relatively
recent innovation for automakers and
commercial-vehicle OEMs. Companies
such as Volkswagen and Daimler have
developed distinct OSs, Hartmann said,
and the trend is expected to gain momentum with others in the industry.
Hartmann also noted that some vehicle manufacturers' and large suppliers' thinking about software development began to " converge " around the
middleware strategy. " We saw that
OEMs are at the same level of thinking, "
he said, adding that the concept of
middleware also seems to align with
hardware developers' efforts to consolidate and reduce the number of vehicle
ECUs. " There is a convergence in the
market on this concept [of systems integration], " he said.
There is potential that every entity in
the supply chain may not see the value
of the middleware solution. Some software developers, for example, may interpret automotive-system middleware
as merely another application programming interface (API)-type of platform
with which to deal.
" We are not alone here - and we will
not create the standard for the whole
world, " Hartmann said. But he said ZF
viewed the development of a middleware platform as " a necessity for ourselves so that we can go down the path
of high-level [vehicle] computing. "
Bill Visnic, with reporting by Ryan Gehm

TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING

ADAS | AUTONOMOUS

Traxen 'trains' AI-based adaptive cruise control
for heavy trucks
Traxen expects
fuel-efficiency
gains to approach
20% by 2023,
based on " systemic
learnings " from
700 million miles of
data obtained from
customer drives.

Artificial intelligence (AI), high-definition maps, and advanced algorithms
and sensors combine to enable Traxen's
intelligent adaptive cruise control (ACC)
system for commercial vehicles, iQCruise, to reduce fuel consumption by
an average of 10% on customer routes.
Piloted by several fleet customers, the
system becomes available to the commercial-vehicle aftermarket in the first
quarter of 2021, followed by OE truck
manufacturers in the next 24 months.
" We are increasing the trucking industry's profit margins by 50%, " said Ali
Maleki, founder and CEO of Traxen, a
Plymouth, Michigan-based technology
startup that's been developing and testing the system for the past two years,
logging more than 1.5 million miles of
data from customers' trucks. " With fuel
cost being one of the top operating
costs for fleets worldwide, delivering a
solution like iQ-Cruise that offers a 10%
fuel efficiency improvement on average
is a remarkable feat for the industry. "
In addition to cost savings on fuel,
brake and tire wear, maintenance, insurance and training costs also can be reduced, said Maleki. Fleets could save an
average of $5,000 per truck per year
using the iQ-Cruise system, he said,

noting a payback period of less than
one year for the technology. " We also
improve end-to-end logistics and provide actionable insight from big data to
fleets. " Vehicle tracking information,
state of health, and arrival and departure notifications are provided to fleets
in real time.
" We are applying existing AI technologies that the industry has developed over the past 10 years - full autonomous driving technologies - to a
specific application of longitudinal
speed controls, " Maleki explained.
" Figuring out what works best was our
biggest challenge [during development]. We started from one algorithm,
to another, and the third one was the
version that worked for us and that
we're implementing today. "

Real-world field trial

Traxen conducted its first side-by-side,
cross-country field trial in August 2020,
which was independently reviewed by
the North American Council for Freight
Efficiency (NACFE). Starting in
Michigan and driving to North Carolina,
then to Las Vegas and back, the iQCruise-enabled trucks outperformed
those with experienced drivers but
February 2021 5

Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - February 2021

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