Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2023 - 13

TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS
benefit of serving as a warning to people
outside the machine.
Multiple camera implementations
Many larger machines deploy multiple
cameras to provide all-around machine
vision and driver awareness. Open platforms
such as CrossControl's can provide
excellent support at both a hardware
and software level to integrate this
asset. The available software modules
that enable commonly desired functionality
include a camera module that provides
the necessary tools for integrating
camera streams into an application for
concurrent visualization of multiple
streams from any brand.
With multiple cameras and digital image-stitching,
it is possible to create a
bird's-eye-view vision system for heavy
vehicles and pair the system with integrated
human detection. A demonstration
of this feature was successfully developed
in collaboration with Mälardalen University
and two successful master's degree candidates.
The result is a bird's-eye view of the
vehicle, giving an overview of the entire
vehicle without blind spots.
The test system can detect humans
within 5 meters (16 ft.) from the vehicle
and visually alert the operator that a
human is approaching. A deployed system
can calibrate the distance to suit
their application. If the system is set to
monitor the direction of travel and automatically
brake if a human is detected,
the stopping distance for a typical
work vehicle traveling at 10 km/h (6
mph) is just 55 cm (21.5 inches) if the
system is detecting at 30 fps, and 75
cm (29.5 inches) if the system operates
at 10 detections per second.
The approach taken for the test solution
incorporates execution directly on
the GPU and allows for improvements
of the system to be implemented, such
as the hardware-accelerated OpenCV
data type UMat. By using such advancements,
this setup decreases the execution
time and increases both available
resources and detection per second.
Johan Persson, senior software application
engineer and the lead for AI exploration at
CrossControl AB, wrote this article for Truck
& Off-Highway Engineering.
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
A recent study by Kenworth demonstrated the advantages of fuel cells compared to batteries for
large trucks in terms of carrying capacity.
April 2023 13
Nikola has developed a 700-bar (10,000-psi) hydrogen mobile fueler capable of direct fueling
fuel-cell electric vehicles.
Hydrogen propulsion continues to gain
traction as a solution for the decarbonization
of medium- and heavy-duty
trucks. Numerous OEMs are currently
testing and demonstrating H2
trucks on
public roads as well as in fleets (www.
sae.org/news/2022/05/hydrogen-technology-commercial-trucks),
and there's
a steady stream of new announcements
in this space.
For example, Nikola announced in
January a new brand, HYLA, that will
encompass the company's energy products
for the production, distribution and
dispensing of hydrogen to fuel its zeroemissions
trucks. The company's Class
8 truck, the Nikola Tre, aims to offer a
range of up to 500 miles (805 km).
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering attended
a presentation at CES 2023 by
Tom Stephenson, CEO and co-founder
of Pajarito Powder. The Albuquerque,
New Mexico-based firm is a manufacturer
of catalysts for use with protonexchange
membrane (PEM) and alkaline
fuel cells and electrolyzers (www.
sae.org/news/2022/08/pajarito-powder-aims-to-slash-fuel-cell-pgm-costs).
Stephenson
highlighted the strengths
of hydrogen propulsion for use in overthe-road
trucks compared to batteryelectric
vehicles (BEVs) and how his
company views hydrogen's role in the
decarbonization of the commercial
trucking sector. He noted the sector has
experienced a significant jump in investment
in the past 18 months.
" The place where we're really seeing
hydrogen vehicles being implemented
is trucks, " Stephenson said. " The reason
HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS
Hydrogen lightens the load for heavy trucks
FROM TOP: NIKOLA; KENWORTH

http://www.sae.org/news/2022/05/hydrogen-technology-commercial-trucks http://www.sae.org/news/2022/08/pajarito-powder-aims-to-slash-fuel-cell-pgm-costs http://www.sae.org/news/2022/05/hydrogen-technology-commercial-trucks http://www.sae.org/news/2022/08/pajarito-powder-aims-to-slash-fuel-cell-pgm-costs http://www.sae.org/news/2022/05/hydrogen-technology-commercial-trucks http://www.sae.org/news/2022/08/pajarito-powder-aims-to-slash-fuel-cell-pgm-costs

Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2023

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