An Integrated Software Concept for Autonomous Driving in the Context of Intermodal Freight Traffic

Combined transport of commercial vehicles by trains is in operation between designated endpoint railway terminals on several subcontinents, e.g. Western Europe, United States and India. Up to now this requires that drivers accompany their commercial vehicles in a separate passenger car which makes this form of transport uncomfortable, inflexible and costly, resulting in that trucks on trains constitute a niche in the broad scope of intermodal freight traffic. The proposed approach addresses the aforementioned problems allowing trucks to operate autonomously and extending the combined traffic over a network of railway terminals. So, we propose unmanned combined transport which requires that the trucks operate autonomously and apply this combined traffic over the network of railway terminals. This paper presents the software architecture for the integrated guidance of commercial vehicles at different levels of abstraction. This includes the animation and the evaluation of the simulated traffic on a railway terminal as well as the complete software stack which is necessary for the disposition of a large number of autonomously operating real commercial vehicles.