Trucks
Trucks
One of the functions available with highly connected vehicles is geofencing: a development that uses location services to increase efficiency and safety, to drive in a more sustainable way, and stay on the right side of changing legislation. We take a closer look at the technology, its implications, and the potential benefits it offers fleet managers and drivers - as well as city-dwellers worldwide.
To say that transportation has changed a lot over the past few decades would be something of an understatement. The industry is in what seems like a constant period of development and flux. And the trucks themselves are becoming more advanced by the year, with individual vehicles judged not only on their power, their efficiency, and the payloads they can carry but also their connectivity, and the various services and functions this enables. One of these functions is geofencing. But what exactly is it: and how can it be useful in today’s changing transportation environment?
Anyone who’s ever used a device with GPS can get to grips with the concept of geofencing. If you’ve ever ridden a public electric scooter or city bike, you’ve probably already used it. It’s a simple enough concept. A device – any device – has its movement tracked, commonly via GPS. This device moves through boundaries that have been drawn on a map, marking out zones.
These boundaries are geofences: invisible, virtual borders to an area. Geofences can move, and be dynamic – they could extend along a certain radius from one point for example, whether that point is moving or stationary – or they could be either permanent or temporary borders set within areas, like school zones or parking spots. The way in which we interact with them can vary enormously, but it mainly happens when the thing we’re using – be that anything from a small motorized scooter to a heavy truck, both of which send and receive data on a very regular basis – crosses into or out of the geofence itself, or is shown to remain inside the geofence. Whenever the device crosses one of these boundaries, something happens.
That could mean any number of things. Perhaps the speed of the vehicle you are driving drops, via activated brakes and limited acceleration. Perhaps a notification is triggered, or your ability to perform a function is either activated or deactivated. The action can even be as simple as triggering a single piece of data: a record of you entering the zone, and what time you did so, or any other relevant info.
Geofences are mostly about information, and knowledge: allowing people to make informed decisions.
One of the benefits of life on the road is freedom, so it is understandable that geofencing has been met at various stages with a mixed response. However, it can also be a way to ensure increased levels of safety, to reduce emissions and even to improve efficiency. Geofences needn’t be intrusive, nor will they entirely remove control from the drivers. A principal use of geofences is to improve driver knowledge so they can adapt their own behavior as the environment might require.
It's important to note that monitoring vehicles and controlling drivers’ and vehicles’ behavior is a sensitive topic, in relation to GDPR and other Privacy legislations. As such, this technology should only be used in cases where companies have undertaken careful legal assessments and risk considerations. The solution will normally require an agreement between the company and the vehicle owner.
As Johan Rundberg, who works with geofencing at Volvo Trucks, puts it: “Geofences are mostly about information, and knowledge: allowing people to make informed decisions.” Although there are functions in trucks which allow geofences to trigger actions that affect driving behavior, they are for the most part about informing the driver, the fleet manager, or anyone else who has a need to be aware of what’s going on.
Johan continues: “You can assign a geofence to one or more vehicles so that when the vehicle enters the geofence there will be an event triggered or recorded. They get notified. There will also be another notification when the vehicle leaves the geofence. A number of different shapes are available: you can do circles, squares, polygons of course, but you can also plan a route and put a geofence around that as well. Then you can log in to your fleet management service and see all these events.”
But what kind of functions are these geofences providing? They can help with route planning, logistics, and scheduling – among other things. Because above all else, they’re adaptable. “The usage of them is very flexible,” says Johan, “and our customers can use them for whatever they want to: but typically, they’ll use them for loading and unloading locations, where they allow the possibility for notification.”
“Maybe the people who are working in a warehouse, loading or unloading the truck, will get a notification about where the truck actually is and a notification that it is set to arrive. They can be prepared to load it: and it also helps the transport company measure productivity, they know how long vehicles have been in a certain area.”
As well as helping fleet managers do their jobs, geofences can also provide more knowledge to the driver: and knowledge is power, particularly when it comes to adapting to your driving environment. Johan explains: “Information is also presented to the driver: they can see in the instrument cluster that they have entered or exited a geofence. Drivers then become more aware of their behavior: it’s more knowledge for them which helps them adapt their driving behavior accordingly to the environment.”
Flexibility is part of the joy of thinking about this, because everybody will have their own way of adapting the services to fit their needs.”
So, the concept of geofencing is itself fairly simple: little more than lines on a map. How vehicles interact with it, as time goes by, is becoming more sophisticated.
Håkan Wall is product owner for zones at Volvo Buses, which has also been working with geofencing technology for years. He sees a mixture of people who wish to use zones to gather information about routes and driver behavior, and those who wish to use it to directly influence how a vehicle behaves. “The main purpose of the zone technology is to control certain functions on the bus,” he says. “This could be in safety zones where a speed limit is imposed, or different zones for hybrid buses where you can control if they drive with the combustion engine or electric power.”
Zone technology can directly determine how the vehicle behaves, rather than simply gathering and providing information. And the flexibility, and adaptability, allows bespoke solutions to be created for individual markets and environments. As Håkan explains: “You could also look at energy use for the heating and cooling systems, depending on how long doors are open when the temperatures are at certain levels outside. Flexibility is part of the joy of thinking about this, because different operators will use the zone services to fit their own needs.”
But what about trucks? Johan Rundberg explains how safety zones might provide real benefits in the workplace. “When a vehicle enters a geofence with a defined speed limit, then the behavior of the vehicle itself could change,” he says. “You would be able to put a limit on the speed that the vehicle can drive within that area.”
Safety zones might also be able to be used to increase highway safety. Johan explains: “It is in everyone’s interest to secure the safety of road workers, which might be done by using geofencing, automatically restricting the speed of vehicles passing by. However, this needs to be regulated: which authority shall have the access to do it? We need to make sure that it is not misused. And another use case which is being discussed is the possibility of limiting the speed of heavily-loaded trucks going over bridges or along poor-quality roads, in order to reduce maintenance and repair costs.”
In practice, although limiting driver behavior might seem unnecessary to some, the technology has been received well. As Håkan Wall says: “When drivers have actually experienced that the vehicle helps keep the speed, keeping the passengers comfortable, it’s really helpful because then they can focus on the passengers and the road itself.”
Balancing the capabilities of a geofence with the requirements of drivers can also help with meeting environmental goals too. As Håkan Wall says: “One thing that could be done is to use zones to reduce the time vehicles spend idling, for example. Maybe that buses could only have their engines idling for a certain number of minutes, and then it’s shut off. Noise is also a factor in environmental zone planning. In front of hospitals, for example, on hills, you can add a zone to switch a vehicle into to electric mode to avoid unnecessary noise.”
As with many aspects of connectivity, zone technology – enabled by geofencing – could well become as natural a part of truck driving as automated gear shifts and safety functions. And experience shows that in many cases, it simply makes life easier. But one thing is for sure: as trucks become more connected, technologies like geofencing will continue to grow in scope, and be adapted, for the benefit of both businesses and citizens around the world.
If you would like to learn more about how connectivity is changing the trucking industry, you might also be interested in reading:
● How connectivity and AI are improving truck uptime
● How data and wireless technology are preventing trucks from breaking down
