Volkswagen, Deutsche Telekom, Finnish firm Unikie, and the Bremen Institute for Production and Logistics have completed a two-year trial of driverless vehicles in finished-vehicle logistics at the Port of Emden. Funded by Germany's transport ministry, the AutoLog project tested how automated cars operate alongside manually driven traffic in active port environments.
The trial used a test area that included parking zones, driving routes, and a roundabout. Work followed ISO 23374, the automated valet parking standard. The Unikie Marshalling Solution coordinated vehicles using a digital site model running on edge computing, with commands sent over Deutsche Telekom's public 5G network.
Vesa Kiviranta, Chief Business Officer for Automotive and Marshalling Solutions at Unikie, stated: "In Emden, we have demonstrated that automated vehicle movements can be tested even in a demanding logistics environment with mixed traffic. The interaction of our marshalling solution with the existing infrastructure and manually driven vehicles is an important step."
The partners also tested automatic rail-wagon loading at Audi's Ingolstadt plant. Results from the closed testing phase will guide further development and assessment of other applications.