NORFOLK, Va. — If you drove through the tunnel along I-564 in Norfolk Monday morning, you may have noticed a vehicle known as an attenuator truck.
But what you may not have noticed is it was operating without the control of a driver.
“The goal of a truck-mounted attenuator is to act, essentially, as a mobile crash cushion at a construction zone," explained Virginia Transportation Research Council Associate Director Mike Fontaine. "We have a worker who drives this (truck) and then their goal is to protect all the folks that are on the road doing construction."
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute provided video of the test. Reporters were not able to get video of the test as it was happening.
While you could see people in the truck, they were not controlling the truck. They were only there to take over if something went wrong.
“We used this to help support some regular maintenance activity that was happening within the tunnel," said Fontaine. "The test was successful. So, this was a good test case on I-564 because the tunnel was relatively short."
Since 2020, VDOT has been funding research for the technology. Eliminating the need for a driver eliminates the chance the workers who currently drive the trucks will get injured if someone crashes into a truck.
“From the VDOT perspective, we have about 30 crashes a year in Virginia where a driver strikes one of these truck-mounted attenuators and these crashes can be very severe," said Fontaine.
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The technology is designed so the truck will be guided by a human-driven vehicle in front of it that will send out signals for the truck to follow.
“This vehicle, the lead vehicle, has a package including a camera, a GPS, an inertial measurement unit, and a wireless link to communicate the data between this lead vehicle and the (truck-mounted attenuator," said Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Senior Technology Implementor Jean Paul Talledo Vilela.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, VDOT, the Virginia Transportation Research Council and DeAngelo Contracting Services are working together to field test the technology.
“The work we do with VDOT is not proprietary," Vilela said. "We are actually encouraging other DOTs and looking for opportunities to demonstrate this system in other states.”
Full implementation of the antonymous system depends on future research and testing.
