Sources: Daimler Trucks North America, Fort Mill, S.C.; CP staff
With exposed surface area equal to nearly 10 football fields, one of the world’s top concrete icons supported an early-May premier for the first autonomous Class 8 truck licensed to use public roads. Hoover Dam, linking Arizona and Nevada at the Black Canyon, served as the backdrop for a prime time video presentation on the Freightliner Inspiration Truck. The vehicle’s arrival at the center of the structure, whose top bears limited U.S. 93 traffic, capped a 30-minute production.
The premier earned Freightliner the Guinness World Record of highest light output projection. To reach 1.17 million lumens, producers deployed 60 26,000-watt projectors for a unique video screening projected onto a surface just over 420,000 sq. ft.—upwards of 90 average-sized IMAX screens. The projectors were synchronized to create an image with a resolution of 4592 x 2048 pixels on board-formed concrete a half-mile away; combined, they generated lumens nearly matching the output of more than 1,400 60-watt household light bulbs. The relatively new technique of using specialized software to warp and mask content, video projection mapping, allows for images to fit onto an irregularly shaped screen such as the Hoover Dam.
The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is equipped with the Highway Pilot sensors and hardware based on a production Cascadia Evolution model, fully certified to meet all U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The Highway Pilot links camera and radar devices with lane stability, collision avoidance, speed control, braking, steering and related monitoring systems. The Inspiration Truck is programmed to maintain legal speed, stay in the selected lane, keep a safe braking distance from other vehicles, and slow or stop based on traffic and road conditions. It monitors changes in conditions that require transition back to driver control when necessary in highway settings. Drivers control highway exiting along with local road and delivery navigating.