VTE September 2019

VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY ENGINEER

Our mobile future is here

Bosch hosts Future Mobility Summit with great success PACCAR posting: A young engineer of the Australian truck industry Future Mobility: The future is promising for Australian vehicles STEM: A look at tomorrow’s engineers today National Manufacturing Summit: We need engineers but tradespeople even more

September 2019 Issue 21 Representing mobility engineers since 1927 www.saea.com.au

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS 2019 FORMULA SAE-A COMPETITION 5 - 8 DECEMBER 2019 WINTON MOTOR RACEWAY, VIC

BE PART OF FORMULA SAE-A AS A VOLUNTEER OFFICIAL Volunteers required for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday

Formula SAE-Australasia is the region’s premier student design competition. The event requires teams to design and build small open-wheel racing cars. Teams are judged not only on speed, but also on energy efficiency, cost and a business presentation.

Formula SAE graduates are highly sought after because they possess industry-relevant skills and can create immediate value for employers.

To run such a large event, we rely on the generous support of our volunteers. Volunteering offers you the opportunity to see new ideas at work, and share the experience with 750+ university students.

To learn more, please visit www.saea.com.au/formulasae

Volunteers receive daily meals, and a commemorative Formula SAE-A polo shirt.

Complete the volunteer form at www.saea.com.au/volunteer

FORMULA SAE-A IS PROUDLY ORGANISED BY SAE-AUSTRALASIA

VTE | Contents

Contents

SEPTEMBER 2019

SAE-A events – PACCAR tour

Special Features 12

PACCAR - A young engineer talks trucks

14

Brisbane Truck Show - highlights from the 2019 event

19

Future Mobility - innovations in vehicle development

22

RTL STEM - teaching engineering to primary school children

24

National Manufacturing Summit - we need tradespeople now

6

Monash Motorsport driverless race car

8

Flying under the radar

12

The Future of Mobility is here

19

VTE News 7

General News

8

Automotive News

9

Defence News

10

Aerospace News

10

Rail News

11

Overseas News

VTE Technical 25

Study on Drowsy Driver Behaviour

Society News 4

Notes from the Chair - Welcome from Adrian Feeney

5

SAE News

6

SAE Events

Real Time Learning and STEM

On the Cover Applied Electric Vehicles’ digital platform car (story page 19)

22

About the SAE-A SAE-A was founded in 1927 to address the need for further education for all facets surrounding Automotive Engineering, and now encompasses all mobility engineering industries in the Australasian region. The SAE-A is a non-profit organisation that works to serve the needs of its members and to promote the relevance of mobility related technologies to governments, industry and the community in general.

The editor, publisher, printer, the Society of Automotive Engineers – Australasia (SAE-A) and their employees, directors, servants, agents and associated or related entities (Publishing Entities) are not responsible for the accuracy or correctness of the text, pictures or other material comprising the contributions and advertisements contained in this publication or for the consequences of any use made of the products, services and other information referred to in this publication. The Publishing Entities expressly disclaim all liability of whatsoever nature for any consequences arising from the use or reliance on material contained in this publication whether caused to a reader of this publication or otherwise. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Publishing Entities. The responsibility for the accuracy or correctness of information and other material is that of the individual contributors and the Publishing Entities do not accept responsibility for the accuracy or correctness of information or other material supplied by others. To the extent permissible by law, the Publishing Entities exclude all liability pursuant to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) or other applicable laws arising from statute or common law.

Readers should make their own inquiries prior to the use of, or reliance on, any information or other material contained in this publication, and where necessary seek professional advice. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without the written permission of SAE-A is strictly prohibited.

www.saea.com.au

VTE | 3

Introduction | Secretary, CEO and Chairman Society of Automotive Engineers

VTE Published By:

Adrian Feeney

Society of Automotive Engineers - Australasia

Secretary, CEO and Chairman Society of Automotive Engineers – Australasia

ABN: 95 004 248 604 Address: PO Box 103, Werribee Vic 3030 Phone: 0403 267 166 Email: info@sae-a.com.au Web: www.saea.com.au

Board of Directors: Chairman CEO & Secretary Adrian Feeney Board:

Kin Cheong Michael Waghorne Greg Shoemark Peter Dale

Dear member, We are now three months into the new board’s tenure so a lot is happening.

age of 16, so please join us in Benalla in the second week in December.

A big focus has been to invigorate the training offered by SAE to ensure it is relevant to our members. We do ask that if you or your organisation has any specific training needs then please contact our office on events@sae-a.com and we will gladly facilitate your needs.

Regarding the new look board, we have been very actively working on your behalf to ensure the members get true value for their membership by looking at just what the role we should play in industry.

Formula SAE is fast approaching and many thanks to the committed team of volunteers who do so much of the behind the scenes organising of this our premier event.

Membership & Subscriptions Rose De Amicis Email: rose@sae-a.com.au

In August, we issued a Save the Date for volunteers to consider attending the event to be an expert judge in various fields of expertise.

Magazine Production:

Then in September the registration for volunteers went live, so please consider how you can assist so that the hundreds of university students can continue to benefit from these real-life hands-on learning experience.

Editor Mandy Parry-Jones Trading Terms Media Email: mandypj@optusnet.com.au Mobile: 0409 806 986

But don’t be concerned if you are not sure if your skills are relevant, believe me they are, we can find a meaningful role for anyone over the

As this process evolves, I will have more to say on this issue but for now, please do not be a stranger to us, if you have any ideas or comments, please contact the SAE-A National Office and give us your views.

Although 2021 may sound a long way off, we are currently preparing for a major conference in that year, under the banner of APAC 21 with the theme being around autonomous vehicles, a topic we in Australia desperately need to be thinking about given the current global trends in this space.

As an industry, the Australian automotive community must remain at the front of the knowledge curve, APAC 21 will be an important part of that process.

Thank you to our Gold, Silver and Bronze sponsors

Design Brigid Fraser Email: fraseram@optusnet.com.au Mobile: 0413 009 122 Advertising Jill Johnson Jill Johnson Media Email: jj@jilljohnsonmedia.com.au Mobile: 0409 217 624

Gold Sponsor

VTE Industry Partner: Excellerate Australia

Silver Sponsor Bronze Sponsors 4 | September 2019

SAE | News

Victorian Manufacturing Showcase VMS is an annual event in its sixth year and hosted by the Victorian Government and the Industry Capability Network.

VMS 2019 will be held at the State Basketball Centre in Wantirna on 22 October and the objective of this event is to showcase successful Victorian manufacturing businesses.

• Dulux Group Australia – Brad Hordern, Executive General Manager – Supply Chain

The SAE-A encourages its member to attend as they will gain valuable insights and networking opportunities with likeminded members of industry.

• Planet Innovation – Stuart Elliott, Co-CEO

This year’s theme is Engage. Innovate.

Create and will have the following speakers: • City of Knox – Cr Jake Keogh, Mayor • Mondelez International – Amanda Banfield, Area VP ANZ & Japan • Trajan Scientific Australia – Stephen Tomisich, Chair and Founder • Q&A with Vossloh Cogifer Australia – Boris Rozentoul, General Manager

• PACCAR Australia – Andrew Hadjikakou, Managing Director • Nukon– Alec Konynenburg, Managing Director • AW Bell Australia – Sam Bell, CEO • Q&A with The Sweet by Nature Group – Megan Misso, Founder, CEO and Director of Marketing • Industry Capability Network – Victoria – Grant Anderson, Executive Director Tickets are available online at https:// www.eventbrite.com.au/e/victorianmanufacturing-showcase-2019-vms19tickets-58692572063

Peter Dale Joins SAE Board Well known engineer Peter Dale who has recently retired as CEO of Volgren, Australia has joined the board of SAE-A. Mr Dale is non-executive director of AF Gason and a member of the Advisory Committee of Swinburne University’s Advanced Manufacturing Industry 4.0 Hub. He has an engineering degree from UTS, an MBA from Monash University and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

During Mr Dale’s tenure at Volgren, which is the largest bus body manufacturer in Australia with facilities in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Malaysia, he grew the business substantially reaching revenues of $200m, gaining 60 percent market share and employing 500 people.

Review of Australian Standard – automatic transmissions Standard Australia are currently conducting a review of Australian Standard AS 3564.1-1988 Automotive Repairs – Terminology Part 1 – Automatic Transmission.

This standard establishes a nomenclature for the repair and servicing of automatic transmissions in the automotive repair industry and aims at eliminating confusion in relation to terminology describing repairs to automotive automatic transmissions.

The review of the current standard is one of a series arising out of submissions by the

www.saea.com.au

automotive repair industry, and consumer and government organisations.

The kick off meeting for this review was held at Standards Australia’s office in Sydney on Wednesday 31 July.

Further information and detail will be issued as appropriate. The SAE-A representative on this committee is Laurie Geyer.

Just prior to his retirement, Volgren delivered a fleet of buses to Tokyo, which were manufactured in Dandenong, Victoria proving that Australia can be globally competitive.

Prior to Volgren, Mr Dale was employed by global engineering company ABB for 10 years working in general management, manufacturing and engineering roles in Sydney, Jakarta and Melbourne.

VTE | 5

SAE | News

Vale: Sidney Hugh McGibbon

SAE-A events – PACCAR tour SAE-A’s PACCAR site visit on 4 June was a very informative.

Mr Sidney Hugh McGibbon (Sid) was the SAE-A’s oldest member and a Life Member of SAE-A. He was born on 14 November 1917 and died on 18 July 2019. He was born in Victoria son of a school teacher and attended Geelong High School. It was intended that Mr McGibbon also follow in his father’s footsteps but it was not meant to be although he did end up teaching but at a higher level.

The PACCAR guide, who was a retired 36year veteran of PACCAR provided a detailed, in-depth account of how Kenworth trucks are designed, specified and built in Melbourne to customer order at the rate of 10 or more per day for customers in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Kenworth employs dozens of professional engineers and drafts people in its design and specification areas.

PACCAR Australia has a 50-year history of manufacturing and selling trucks and related services and parts in Australia.

From its inception in 1966, the company has expanded, and celebrated the production of its 60,000th Kenworth truck in 2017.

After leaving school in fifth form he became a motor mechanic apprentice in a large engineering works and attended night school from 1934 to 1939. It was there that he was approached to attend night classes at the Institute of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineers which was in Melbourne. And so, Mr McGibbon prepared himself for further studies for a Diploma of Mechanical Engineering but the war was declared and he joined up.

On returning after the war he started teaching apprentices in motor mechanics, and fitting and turning at night school and was later offered a full-time position at the Gordon Institute of Technology where he became head of the department.

Sometime later he contacted the SAE in Melbourne and so his association with the SAE commenced. At the SAE dinner meeting on 18 March 1987 Mr McGibbon was presented with his Honorary Life Membership award.

“The SAE has been a great help during my lifetime in keeping me informed of the important changes and introduction of new material into our industry. So much of it is way over my head but makes for very interesting reading in my spare time,” Mr McGibbon said at the SAE-A’s 90th anniversary dinner in 2017.

6 | September 2019

The company also imports and sells DAF Trucks, all supported and complemented by PACCAR Parts, PACCAR Financial and most recently PacLease.

The company does more than adapt vehicles to suit local conditions it re-engineers them to suit the market, and sells them through an independent, extensive dealer network.

One of the more interesting contrasts that became evident during the tour was that between the skilled spray painters who paint the chassis – with a myriad of variations from one to another, and the computerprogrammed robots that spray the cabs with their much smaller number of variants – a real world insight into the different applications for human and automated processes.

The road less travelled for women in automotive SAE International has released a book titled “The Road to the Top is Not on the Map: Conversations with Top Women of the Automotive Industry”.

It featuring 36 of the most influential women in the automotive industry, who offer their insights and advice for colleagues, peers and the next generation of women entering the workforce.

The book will go on sale on 1 October 2019 and is available for pre-order at www.sae.org/r491 The book’s 36 contributors from suppliers to OEMs to higher education, candidly share their in-depth perspectives on the habits, motivations, triumphs, defeats and lessons learned that helped them achieve top jobs in the industry.

The book is relevant for women at all stages in their careers by providing real-world experiences to demonstrate how to take charge of one’s career. The contributors

offer poignant insights on such topics as career challenges, education and lifelong learning, mentor and sponsor relationships, personal satisfaction, resilience, and worklife integration.

General | News

Manufacturing modernisation fund to help manufacturers Small and medium sized Australian manufacturers are to be assisted by the Federal Government’s investment for new technology, growth and to create new jobs with the launch of a $160 million fund.

This followed roundtable talks with industry leaders, associations and universities discussing ways that would enable the transformation of existing and future manufacturing industries to build a competitive advantage in global markets.

These talks also dealt with change and disruption to these industries and the take up of technology.

One in 10 workers in Australia is employed in manufacturing.

Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews said the Manufacturing Modernisation Fund would help manufacturers become more competitive by cofunding investments in new technologies.

“Strengthening our core and emerging manufacturing industries is a key part of the Government’s economic plan to create 1.25 million new jobs over the next five years,” Minister Andrews said.

“This delivers on the Morrison Government’s commitment to help manufacturing businesses innovate and develop competitive advantage so they can thrive globally.

“Investing in technology can transform businesses, enabling them to become more productive, manufacture new products and create new jobs.

“The fund will provide grants to small and medium manufacturing businesses so they can invest in capital equipment and new

technologies to modernise and employ more Australians. It will also support businesses to upskill workers to maximise the benefits of technology.”

The Manufacturing Modernisation Fund will include $50 million from the Government and will be matched by at least $110 million from industry.

The fund will have two types of grants: 1. $20 million will be for matched grants of between $50,000 and $100,000 for smaller scale technology investments.

2. $30 million for larger-scale grants of up to $1 million, on a three to one funding basis with industry, to support transformative investments in technologies and processes.

The fund builds on other Government investments in manufacturing growth and competitiveness, including the $100 million Advanced Manufacturing Fund, the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, the Entrepreneurs’ Programme, and the $40 million Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre.

Caravan Industry Association new board member After five years on the Caravan Industry Association of Australia National Board Gerry Ryan OAM has tendered his resignation from his position as director.

Much has been achieved at a national level since the merger of CRVA and RVMAA back in 2014, and Mr Ryan has provided incredible guidance and support during this time as a director, while making a significant contribution to the Board.

There is much going on with regard to trade based compliance within the Industry at present, with a number of working meetings being undertaken to address how to achieve better compliance outcomes.

Based on this, the board determined that it was appropriate to fill the casual vacancy with an individual who had the necessary background and experience who could continue to assist the association through these exciting but challenging times.

The individual most suited to this was determined to be Garry Moore, the CEO of Jayco who has been invited onto the board until the upcoming November AGM at which time he would be subject to renomination and election.

Celebrity engineer’s new youtube series Mouser Electronics and celebrity engineer Grant Imahara joined forces again in this latest edition of the award-winning Empowering Innovation Together series: Engineering Big Ideas.

This four part series explores the process of turning an idea into a product and examines the path to commercialization from discovery to design and eventually development.

Mr Imahara and Mouser explore the stops, the starts, the pitfalls, and the excitement of bringing an idea to life.

They take a closer look at how individuals and small groups can move from idea inception to an end product in the absence of huge corporate resources and technological infrastructure.

To kick off the series, Mr Imahara visits the Arizona test track of Nikola Motor Company.

There, he talks with CEO Trevor Milton about how Nikola Motor Company is bringing its vision for hybrid truck design to market, and www.saea.com.au

revolutionizing the economic and environmental impact of commerce in the process.

To watch the first video, go to https://youtu.be/u4mnYkH8ntc.

VTE | 7

News | Auto

Monash Motorsport develops driverless race car Monash Motorsport students are pushing the boundaries of automotive technology, creating Australia’s first student-built driverless race car equipped to compete against the world’s best Formula Student teams in the driverless category.

From developing complex computer-vision algorithms, to designing robust actuation hardware, the driverless race car, the M19D, is the result of a collaboration between some of the brightest minds across Monash University’s diverse faculties.

Monash Motorsport’s Chief Executive Officer, Paras Bhutiani, said the M19-D was more than three years’ in the making, and is competitionready for the Formula Student driverless competition in Germany in 2020.

“We first began development on the M19-D way back in 2016, with over 200 undergraduate students from Monash working tirelessly to bring it to fruition. The talented team at Monash designed and built its innovative and high-performance features to create the state-of-the-art driverless vehicle, which we’re excited to compete with in the upcoming Formula Student driverless competition in Germany next year,” he said.

The M19-D’s key features include:

• the ability to detect the racetrack and perceive the environment in real time • an advanced laser scanner, also known as a LiDAR unit • a stereoscopic camera system that can perceive distance similar to the human eye, using artificial intelligence • a proven electric powertrain with more than 1000km of on-track testing • a GPS unit that can accurately locate the race car within a 10cm radius • an Emergency Braking System with complete redundancy in case of a vehicle fault.

Monash Motorsport’s Driverless Chief

Engineer, Aryaman Pandav, said it’s been an exciting and rewarding experience leading the build of the M19-D, which has provided him with the skills to be job-ready when he finishes his double degree in mechatronics engineering and science at the end of 2020.

“I’ve been part of the Monash Motorsport team since 2017. Since joining, I’ve not only gained hands-on engineering experience, but also the strong leadership skills required to excel in my career and lead a team effectively,” he said.

“I’ve also created strong industry connections through networking with Monash alumni, partners and sponsors that will best prepare me for today’s workforce. Without being part of the Monash Motorsports team, this wouldn’t have been possible.”

In debuting Australia’s first student-built autonomous race car, the students have proven their capability to lead innovation in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, computer vision and machine learning, well before they’ve even graduated.

Monash Motorsport is a student-run team comprising more than 130 active members who design, build, test and race Formula SAE cars in Australia and across the globe.

Generating electric power with tyres Sumitomo Rubber Industries and Kansai University have developed a new technology to generate electric power from the rotation of a tyre.

The research, undertaken by Professor Hiroshi Tani of Kansai University, found that by installing an energy harvester inside a tyre, static electricity can be converted to clean energy.

This energy harvester takes advantage of a type of static electricity called frictional charging, which is formed each time a tyre’s footprint deforms as it rotates along the road.

8 | September 2019

It is believed that this technology holds great potential for practical applications such as a power source for many automotive digital tools.

Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI) is confident that the results of this latest research will lead to practical applications for this new technology as a power source for sensors used in TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System) and other automotive devices,

contributing to the creation of future services that make use of digital tools without the need for batteries.

Defence | News

Submarine masters for postgrad engineers A rejuvenated Master of Marine Engineering (MME) program – backed by the expertise and resources of ASC, Australia’s submarine company – is seeing dozens of postgraduate students at the University of Adelaide prepare for a career building and sustaining Australia’s current and future submarines.

Seven small businesses partner on defence Seven small businesses will partner with Rheinmetall Defence Australia on two major projects for the Australian Army.

The seven companies will share in nearly $20 million of work under the LAND 400 Phase 2 and LAND 121 Phase 5B. LAND 400 Phase 2 will provide Army with 211 Boxer combat reconnaissance vehicles, which Rheinmetall will assemble at their facility in South East Queensland, while LAND 121 Phase 5B will provide heavy and medium logistics vehicles and modules.

This year 49 students are undertaking the Master’s course work in submarine design (naval architecture and maritime engineering), sustainment, supply chain, project management and related subjects, within the University’s School of Mechanical Engineering.

The program, offered every two years, has grown from 27 students in 2017 and nine students in 2015.

The ramp-up in enrolments for the Master’s course reflects the place Adelaide will occupy at the centre of submarine and major warship design and construction in coming decades, under the bi-partisan approach to the naval shipbuilding industry.

ASC provides internationally recognised

subject matter experts with experience working on more than 10 submarine classes from UK, France, Spain, Sweden and Australia.

The Master of Marine Engineering, delivered

by ASC and the University of Adelaide, is among few postgraduate courses available in Australia in marine engineering, and is the only one in submarine design.

In recognition of the high standards of achievement, students are being offered free membership with the prestigious Royal Institution of Naval Architects and the students’ best projects are presented to the Submarine Institute of Australia Technical Conference, SubsTec.

Grants to small business for defence work The Federal Government announced $12.4 million of grants awarded to small businesses contributing to the build-up of Australia’s defence capability.

Minister for Defence Industry, the Hon Melissa Price MP, said the Sovereign Industrial Capability Priority (SICP) grants were awarded to small businesses developing or supporting capabilities critical to Defence.

“By prioritising 10 key capabilities and supporting Australian small businesses who are contributing to them, we’re developing a strong, sovereign industrial base,” Minister Price said.

“This will help build a robust, resilient and competitive defence industry that utilises Australian jobs and knowledge.” www.saea.com.au

The seven contracts are the initial contracts as part of around $1.9 billion of work to be undertaken by Australian industry.

Each company will be part of a growing cohort of local small businesses already delivering parts and services to Rheinmetall as the company builds its network of suppliers across Australia and establishes a local capability to underpin a national military vehicle industry.

The companies are 1. Melbourne-based Cablex: vehicle systems and C4I cabling for the first 25 BOXER vehicles.

2. Sydney-based Eylex: crew communications equipment including headsets for the first 25 BOXER vehicles.

3. Melbourne-based Tectonica Australia: driver’s aids for night time situational awareness for the first 25 BOXER vehicles.

Grant recipients include manufacturing companies supporting our land combat vehicles, businesses undertaking research and development on cutting-edge technologies and local businesses delivering the government’s naval shipbuilding plan.

The next round of the Sovereign Industrial Capability Priority grants program close on 1 October 2019. Applications can be submitted through the Centre for Defence Industry Capability website at www.business.gov.au/cdic

4. Brisbane-based ABI Coating Specialists: paint and finish for the first 25 BOXER vehicles.

5. Ballarat-based Bartlett: tarpaulins for selected Rheinmetall MAN high mobility logistics vehicles.

6. Adelaide-based Supashock: spare wheel carriage system for Rheinmetall MAN Heavy Transport vehicles.

7. Newcastle-based Varley: various modules for the Rheinmetall MAN high mobility logistics vehicles.

VTE | 9

News | Aero & Rail

Aerotropolis in Sydney

UNSW SpaceX Hyperloop pod competition

BAE Systems will help deliver a new cutting edge space research and development facility as part of a university and advanced manufacturing precinct

UNSW Hyperloop, a team of University of New South Wales undergraduate engineering students, is working to innovate the future of high speed travel and the team recently competed in the SpaceX Hyperloop pod competition, where they placed 7th overall. This was the best result for a newcomer to the competition.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian was at BAE Systems headquarters in London to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the company, to ensure NSW leads the nation in developing tomorrow’s scientists, engineers and mathematicians.

“The Aerotropolis we are building around the Western Sydney Airport is a great opportunity for firms around the world to invest in NSW,” Ms Berejiklian said.

“BAE Systems Australia’s interest in NSW as a destination for this research facility is a huge vote of confidence in our economy and our plans for the new airport city.

“This partnership will allow us to create the high tech jobs we need to keep NSW as the number one jobs market in the nation.”

BAE Systems Australia’s Chief Executive Officer Gabby Costigan said the MOU will allow the company to explore the advantages of becoming a part of the innovation precinct at the new airport city.

It is anticipated that the Western Sydney Aerotropolis will be the home of Australia’s future aerospace industry.

UNSW Hyperloop is a group of 27 students aspiring to establish themselves as Australia’s front runners in hyperloop technology.

UNSW Hyperloop was founded at the end of 2018 with the purpose of innovating the future of high-speed travel. As conceptualised

by Elon Musk, the technology explores the potential for pressurised pod vehicles moving through vacuum tubes to travel at speeds twice that of planes with the added benefit of lower fuel consumption and increased safety.

The SpaceX Hyperloop pod competition’s goal is “to support the development of functional prototypes and encourage innovation by challenging student teams to design and build the best high-speed pod”.

In addition to placing 7th out of 21 teams, the UNSW Hyperloop team was the first team to successfully complete a self-propelled test

run at its first appearance at competition level.

However, the highlight for many students was meeting Elon Musk in person.

Previous winners of the competition have reached speeds of 284 mph (approx. 457 km/h) in SpaceX’s specially designed tunnel.

The winner in 2019, Technical University of Munich was also supported by Schaeffler, and managed to break that record and achieved 288 mph (463 km/h).

Rail underfunded and undertrained Rail is undergoing a continuum of significant public investment as State, Territory and the Commonwealth Government are funding over $150 Billion in new rail infrastructure projects over the next 15 years, with new and expanded heavy and light rail, metro and freight rail projects planned or underway in most Australian states and capital cities.

The Australasian Railway Association (ARA) has previously warned this plethora of projects would be delayed and delivered over-budget if issues causing skilled labour shortages are not addressed in a collaborative approach between government and industry.

A range of senior industry leaders from companies involved in rail construction, infrastructure and operations addressed the nation’s transport Ministers at the 11th Transport and Infrastructure Council in Adelaide, a biannual meeting of the federal, state and territory transport Ministers.

The executives gave ministers first-hand accounts of the current challenges due to skills and resources shortages.

Industry also raised the following needs with government: 10 | September 2019

• Rail skills training to receive its fair share of government skills investment; • The need for quality rail training facilities to be elevated to national centres of excellence so that rail employees and companies across the country can access quality training at an industry level; • The need to address unnecessary jurisdictional barriers that inhibit seamless transferability of skilled labour between state rail jurisdictions. Different jurisdictional operational environments, rail standards and technologies currently lead to the need for extensive and costly retraining and reaccreditation needed when staff seek to work on different networks. Modularised training would reduce the need for extensive retraining.

• Cost pressures built into current tendering and procurement processes mitigate against training of skilled workers.

Innovative solutions are needed to facilitate industry-wide training. Solutions could include an industry wide training levy to fund training, and dedicated programs to identify target groups.

• The imposition of project quotas in contracts for major construction jobs is not necessarily the most effective way of addressing skill shortages. Project timeframes are often shorter than apprenticeships themselves, and target groups are often not aligned to skills shortage areas. There are inconsistent approaches across the country. Resolving some of these issues would facilitate improved training.

Overseas | News

BMW doubles production of high voltage batteries

Allison Transmission’s factory in Hungary has assembled its 250,000th fully automatic transmission.

BMW’s Spartanburg facility in South Carolina has doubled its capacity for production of high-voltage batteries.

The transmission was a 4000 Series Torqmatic model destined for Van Hool, a bus, coach and industrial vehicle manufacturer from Belgium.

The plant’s own battery facility now produces the new fourth-generation batteries. These are intended for the plug-in hybrid models of the new BMW X5 and the future BMW X3, also produced in Spartanburg.

“We have invested around 10 million US dollars in a new battery assembly line and expanded the area to more than 8000 square metres. This means we could double the number of batteries produced if needed to meet market demand,” Michael Nikolaides, Senior Vice President Engines and Electrified Drivetrains, BMW Group said.

The new assembly line will be able to produce different types of fourth-generation batteries

Alison’s 250,000th auto

to serve the growing range of electrified vehicles locally.

These batteries are based on a new technology concept that further enhances their performance. More than 120 people will be employed in battery production at Plant Spartanburg by the end of the year, having completed a comprehensive training program to acquire the technological know-how needed for battery production.

Okuma’s dream machines Okuma a builder of CNC machine tools has completed the company’s newest production facility Dream Site 3 (DS3) located in Kani, Japan.

To commemorate the occasion, employees of Allison and its suppliers joined to celebrate the result of 19 years of assembling transmissions in Hungary.

Fuel cell catalysts doubled An interdisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has built platinum nanoparticles for catalysis in fuel cells: The new size-optimized catalysts are twice as good as the best process commercially available today.

Fuel cells may well replace batteries as the power source for electric cars.

They consume hydrogen, a gas which could be produced using surplus electricity from wind power plants. However, the platinum used in fuel cells is rare and extremely expensive, which has been a limiting factor.

The research team has optimized the size of the platinum particles to such a degree that the particles perform at levels twice as high as the best processes commercially available today.

This smart factory utilises technology, robots and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) to manufacture vertical and horizontal machining centres and double-column machining centres.

DS3 is a self-contained start-to-finish production facility and is the third smart factory investment by Okuma in the company’s headquarters in Japan, with the first two factories – DS1 & DS2 built in 2013 and 2017 at Oguchi.

DS1 was one of the first self-contained startto-finish smart factories.

Okuma is building its smart factories based on the goal of building futuristic factories that interweave automation with skilled techniques. These smart factories combine www.saea.com.au

cutting-edge automation, technologies for unmanned operation, advanced IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), and workplace know-how to achieve high-mix low-volume production while maintaining production efficiency equivalent to that of mass production.

Mr Hanaki, President and CEO of Okuma Corporation was awarded the Honor Medal ‘The Order of the Rising Sun Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon’.

The Honor Medal was presented at an award ceremony held by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in recognition of Mr Hanaki’s long-term contribution to the growth of the machine tool industry and other industries and to the benefit to society through the company’s activities.

Renault and Jianglish Motors joint electric venture The companies established this to develop China’s EV industry.

The strategy of both companies will enable them to expand their influence in China’s electric vehicle market.

“China is a key market for Groupe Renault.

This partnership ... with JMCG will support our growth plan,” said Francois Provost, senior vice president, chairman of China region Groupe Renault.

VTE | 11

Interview | Paccar

Flying under the radar

Truck manufacturing in Australia almost counts as one of those industries that flies under the radar, which is almost comical given the size of the trucks that are not only built but designed here. Not much thought is given to the industry despite its good health and vitality, perhaps that’s why it’s not consuming the column inches in newspapers – it is doing well compared with its smaller automotive cousins who are now all imported despite a few lonely start-ups.

Little is understood about the truck industry by the general public and probably also by engineers many of whom have dreamt of designing cars but have not turned their minds to trucks.

Kimberly Bennett doesn’t quite fit into that mould though, the young Adelaide born engineer was not blinkered in any way when she was completing her mechanical engineering degree.

“Through my later high school years, I really wasn’t clear on where I wanted to go,” she said. “I happened to be good at maths so that led me into an engineering degree but I didn’t want to restrict myself to a particular type of engineering.

“I had mates who were doing automotive specifically or aerospace, but I thought a more general mechanical would give me a greater option for going into the workforce.”

It was this open attitude that led her to what has become an extremely enjoyable career at PACCAR, the manufacturer of Kenworth and DAF trucks in Australia.

Now in her eighth year with the company she had a fortuitous start.

“To finish off my uni degree I needed to do 12 weeks of work experience and I had a contact at Kenworth and he said why not come and do your work experience here. I knew nothing about trucks ... and I loved it and asked whether they had a graduate program,” she said.

The PACCAR graduate program is a four-year program and every 12 to 18 months you are rotated around to different departments.

“I started in manufacturing engineering looking after the procurement of tools, jigs

12 | September 2019

and identifying efficient ways of building our trucks, helping out our production team.

“Then my second year was in liaison engineering, which is the link between our production team and engineering. So, when there is a problem on the line and they can’t build the truck for whatever reason then I was called in to figure out what the reason is and how we can solve it. That was really eye opening, it was a lot of thinking on your feet, quick resolutions, it was really exciting.

“My third year was in customer service, because you’ve got to see the end result and what happens if we don’t do our best with our design. My final year was in R&D; research and development and that’s where I have stayed. I’m still there now and I’m now one of the project managers for product design and development.”

Now part of her job entails reviewing what her designers have come up with from a point of view of whether it is durable and reliable; in short whether it is what customers have come to expect from such a well-respected truck brand.

“I have two people working directly for me and we’re a part of a larger concept team which is another 3-4 people. We each take certain chunks of a project to work on at this early stage.

“We come together once a week to review how we have developed our area, make sure we are not impeding on other peoples’ area and that we’re cohesive,” Ms Bennett said.

Also on a monthly basis, she can be working with up to 20 suppliers very closely, and in the early stages of a project she will engage with five or so quite heavily to identify the best

Kimberly Bennett engineering design for manufacturing that will either bring costs down or improve the quality, or improve the visible design. There’s no point spending time designing something that can’t be manufactured or done in a cost-effective way.

“At the moment, we are at the early stages of the next project I’m working on so we’re trying to gather a lot of different information so that requires me to work with sales, purchasing, talking to customers directly. There’s lots of planning at the moment,” she said.

“We have to keep many factors in our minds – manufacture, assembly and then also service.

We’ll have reviews with other departments to make sure we have their buy-in and that we have considered all those different factors.”

Information comes from all sides including the sales and customer service departments and then there’s also the practical side where Ms Bennett visits customers and spends time not only with the company that purchases the truck, but on the road with a driver.

One such day was spent with Hansons, a concrete company, in the passenger seat of a cement truck while the driver went about his daily business. This enabled her to gain a solid understanding of the work done day-inday-out by the driver and what was required of his truck. The truck was a T360, a truck just recently released.

“It was a really proud moment when we launched our new model the T360, on which

Paccar | Interview

I was a program manager. It was gratifying to see that released to the public and all the positive feedback, that personally was a really great moment,” she said.

What does a day look like for a Paccar engineer?

“I make sure I grab a coffee first, that’s task number one. I run through my emails … then I will sit down with my team and work out what we’re going to do, we’ll review the designs we’ve been working on, and if I can give any guidance or direction there that’s what I’ll do,” Ms Bennett said.

“We have a workshop in R&D and we do a lot of prototypes in that workshop; we have a 3D printer we can use to mock parts up and then we also have our test and certification team of two and they will help us take the trucks out for a drive. We’ll instrument them up whether for sound recording or vibration recording.

Then analyse that data, we do a lot in-house.”

One of the standouts between car and truck manufacturing is the amount of specification that must be done for any one truck order so that it meets the exact requirements of the job.

Take the T360 as an example, it comes with six engine options, three manual transmission and seven automatic transmissions options, then there are options for drive configurations, exhaust, fuels, suspension, axles and safety systems. Compare that with a car and its easy to see how much engineering work is needed for truck manufacturing; it’s not a case of let’s build a model range, each truck is a custom build.

Kenworth more than any other truck in Australia has a very strong, distinctive and traditional customer base – it has a stronger following than Ford or Holden could every hope for. The older customer base loves the Kenworth woodgrain dash, the diamond plate trim, to them that is a Kenworth but there are also new young drivers coming into the industry.

These younger drivers are looking more at European truck designs, and these designs are much more ‘automotive’ based, with a lot of high tech equipment and a more streamlined interior and exterior.

“We have to move with the times, we certainly need to integrate as much technology as

www.saea.com.au

we can so that we can include all the safety features that are available to us these days like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, all those,” Ms Bennett said.

“We have a lot of new technology available to us, new styling, new design techniques and it is nice to be involved in that.

“The technology has come from our parent company PACCAR. There’s been a big focus recently for a global PACCAR push so that we can all share off one big platform and get the most out of the technology available to us.

“We have to take the US product and do our own evaluation and testing. The Australian conditions are a lot different to the US – harsher conditions, the road quality isn’t as great, so there’s many things that come into it.

We evaluate their designs to make sure they will be suitable for our customers.”

Training and an investment in its staff is a big part of PACCAR so that means that access to training is easily given and encouraged.

“We’ll have subject matter experts give a presentation on the types of technology and what’s available. We integrate it conservatively, we borrow from what PACCAR is doing globally and pick which is the best course for us,” Ms Bennett said.

“We build it into a prototype truck and we’ll spend many months validating it and how to best to optimise it.

“We have regular contact with DAF and PACCAR engineers to exchange ideas, we have ways to connect with them, we can see what projects they are working on and if there is something that relates to us we can get involved. It’s on us to get involved as much as we want to.”

Different engineering areas work on different solutions, being in R&D means that Ms Bennett is looking longer term down the track than those in liaison engineering as an example.

“I’m involved in a 3 to 5-year program but there is another department that is looking further ahead than that, around 10 years – that involves hydrogen and electric powered vehicles, those sorts of things.”

After eight years with trucks and PACCAR, Ms Bennett now feels that is where she belongs.

“Just driving down the street, a truck will go past and that will turn my head, I’m always on the lookout, it’s now part of me. I love what I do, I love the people I work with and I love the opportunities that are open to me.

“There are a number of graduates that started in the same year as I did that have made it to management positions, that’s what so good about this company they are open to the development of young engineers and other graduates.”

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Feature | Truck

Truck show takes a hike For years the Brisbane Truck Show, held every alternate year is the truck show to attend, others have sprung up but none bring together the industry quite so well.

The 2019 Brisbane Truck Show was held in May 2019 and this year enjoyed a 10 percent increase in patronage.

Heavy Vehicle Industry Association (HVIA) Chief Executive Todd Hacking was full of praise for the support of the show from the heavy vehicle industry and its customers.

“It’s been an amazing experience to join the organisation in the lead-up to this event and it’s so gratifying to see the way it is supported by our members and the broader heavy vehicle industry,” he said.

“Attendance was well up on the last show with 36,921 recorded coming through the doors across the four days.”

The 2019 truck show featured a number of new initiatives, none more prominent than the addition of the new umbrella event – Australian Heavy Vehicle Industry Week.

Many exhibitors held dinners, drive days, factory tours and other activities around the event.

“The displays in Queen Street Mall by the Daimler Group and in Redcliiff Place by the Volvo Group are two great examples,” Mr Hacking said.

“With the support of the Queensland Government and the City of Brisbane we were able to bring that to life in a variety of other ways too.

“We were able to open up Mt Cotton testing and training track for use by our exhibitors and stakeholders.

“NatRoad brought their national conference to Brisbane as a brilliant value-add for attendees.”

Another initiative was the launch of a stateof-the-art Jobs Hub to help prospective workers find employment across a wide range occupations in the heavy vehicle industry.

Queensland Minister for State Development, Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Planning Cameron Dick said the launch of the new jobs hub at the Brisbane Truck Show was a strong show of support for the heavy vehicle industry.

“This is the first time the Queensland Government has partnered with Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia (HVIA) to support Australian Heavy Vehicle Industry Week and the Brisbane Truck Show,” Mr Dick said.

“It’s the largest business-to-business event in Queensland and brings in over $70 million to our economy, making it the perfect environment to launch a dedicated jobs hub that will help getting an advanced manufacturing or supply job in the heavy vehicle industry that much easier for Queenslanders.

“The new online portal is free to use and currently has jobs on offer from all over Queensland and beyond for people with various levels of experience, qualifications or those wanting to enter the heavy vehicle industry for the first time.”

The Brisbane Truck Show will return to the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from Thursday 13 to Sunday 16 May 2021.

Auto centre of excellence for heavy vehicles and hybrids TAFE Queensland’s SkillsTech is set to become home of the Automotive Centre of Excellence for training in heavy vehicle trades and new hybrid and autonomous technologies.

Minister for Training and Skills Development Shannon Fentiman announced funding of $2 million for construction of the new centre, which is due to start in November 2019.

“The centre will have the capacity to cater for more than 30 students at a time with three heavy plant workshop bays, two vehicle testing spaces, and a test cell observation space.

“As Queensland moves towards a greener future, more and more of our transport and heavy machinery will also be replaced by hybrid models,” Ms Fentiman said.

“There will also be two classrooms and a virtual classroom to allow for simulated training.”

“This investment will see TAFE Queensland partnering with industry to focus their training on preparing Queenslanders for a greener, cleaner tomorrow.

“The new facilities will provide world class training facilities for the hybrid and autonomous vehicle industry using new machinery which produces lower emissions.”

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Member for Stretton Duncan Pegg said the $2 million funding was part of more than $13 million being spent on infrastructure upgrades at the Acacia Ridge campus in 2019-20.

“In addition to the $2 million for construction, TAFE Queensland will be investing in new state-of-the-art equipment allowing students to train using the latest in hybrid and autonomous technologies,” Mr Pegg said.

Member for Toohey Peter Russo said this project is in addition to the construction of a new $650,000 Caravan Industry Training Facility to cater for the growth in demand for recreational vehicles.

“The investment at Acacia Ridge is part of the Palaszczuk Government’s more than $105 million investment to renew and expand TAFE campuses across Queensland,” Mr Russo said.

“We need to plan for the future of Queensland and ensure we have the skilled workers now and for the emerging industries such as the caravan industry and hybrid vehicle training.”

Truck | Feature

New models show off in Brisbane Kenworth showed off its new trucks the T410 and the T360 at the Brisbane Truck Show as did Volvo – these are the two main truck manufacturers in Australia and account for around 35 percent of the market.

Kenworth’s T410 and T360 replace the T409 and T359 trucks and are heading towards sophisticated engineering as has been seen in cars for sometime with new electronic architecture CANbus electronic controls and sensors.

These can be put to use in adding the latest safety equipment like active cruise control, lane keeping, reversing cameras to the trucks – and even more equipment as it is developed for truck use. The modern design of the new cabins allows for better visibility with larger windscreens and side windows.

Even so the company has chosen to maintain a distinguishable Kenworth look and feel but definitely more modern.

Alongside the Kenworth on the line at PACCAR in Bayswater is the Dutch DAF truck which is now being assembled in Australia DAF’s CF85/510 was on display and the assembly of DAF trucks here means that they can be more easily customised for Australian conditions and tastes, and adapted

by PACCAR’s team of engineers also adding a host of local parts and equipment. This bodes well for Australian engineers with the company expanding its range.

Also on show was the DAF Euro-6 truck models, the LF260 12 tonner and the LF290 18 tonner aimed at the local market.

Volvo showed off its new larger XXL cabin reengineered for the XL Gobetrotter cab.

Not long after the show Martin Merrick was named President of Volvo Group Australia, effective from 1 September, 2018. Mr Merrick joins Volvo Group Australia from Volvo Trucks in Sweden.

Commenting on his appointment, Mr Merrick acknowledged the competitiveness of Volvo Group Australia and opportunities presented by the underlying local market strength.

“Like many colleagues at Volvo, I have kept a close eye on what has been happening in Australia and New Zealand as they continue to be lead markets for us in areas such as R&D, particularly in developing products to suit the quite unique needs of local customers,” Mr Merrick said.

Volvo Group Australia has experienced strong growth in recent years, and by the end of 2017 the combined marked share of Volvo, Mack and UD Trucks was 27.2 percent. It is the only local truck manufacturer with ‘Made in Australia’ certification, and since operations began in 1972 more than 60,000 trucks have been produced at the Group’s factory in Wacol, Queensland.

Isuzu displayed its range of trucks including the Electric Vehicle (EV) concept, which was originally shown in Melbourne in June 2018. The Australian arm commenced an EV development program mid 2018 and is looking to produce two trucks; one in the 8-9 tonne gross vehicle mass (NQR) and the other in the 12-14 tonne GMW (FSR) with the NQR having maximum and continuous power of 130kW and 100kW respectively, while those for the FSR are 250kW and 150kW. No update on how the project is progressing.

However, Isuzu was not the only electric truck to be shown in Brisbane with the Reo, Foton SEA and Tatra trucks also on the floor.

SEA Electric is an Australian automotive technology company that locally develops and assembles 100% electric-powered vans, commuter busses, and light/medium duty rigid truck models using its proprietary SEADrive power-systems.

It is collaborating with Isuzu on its electric truck program, as well as other truck companies and has developed a number of electric trucks including a garbage compactor based on the IVECO ACCO. Dana has entered into an agreement with SEA as has Fuso, Cummins and Meritor.

SEA Electric head office operates from a facility in Melbourne with plans underway for a large-scale assembly facility in the Latrobe Valley in regional Victoria.

Hino a safe bet Hino Australia reinforced its position as a leader in trucking safety, innovation and technology with an impressive stand at the 2019 Brisbane Truck Show.

Headlining the stand were two of the 54 available variants of the all-new 500 Series Standard Cab – a FE1426 and a FD1124.

Speaking at the media briefing, Hino Australia’s General Manager of Brand and Franchise Development Bill Gillespie said: “The 500 Series Standard Cab boasts the most comprehensive active safety package available from a Japanese manufacturer in the medium duty market.

“The safety features it contains are all standard because, at Hino, the safety of our customers, their passengers and other road users is not an option.” www.saea.com.au

Another feature of the Hino stand was an example of the new heavy-duty Hino A05 turbo-charged five-litre four-cylinder diesel engine that powers the 500 Series Standard Cab models.

“Not only does it deliver superior torque, increased power and improved fuel efficiency but it also has the cleanest exhaust emissions ever for a Hino truck in Australia, complying with Japan’s stringent post Post New Long Term (pPNLT) exhaust gas emissions standard.

“This is the equivalent to Euro 6 and is set to comply with the ADR80/04 emissions

standards which are not expected to be mandated here in Australia for a number of years,” Mr Gillespie said.

Technology and innovation were key themes of the stand with an interactive display of the new smart Hino Multimedia system which will be rolled out across the entire range of Hino light, medium and heavy duty trucks by the end of the year.

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CHANGES IN THE PARKING SPACE You can’t have missed the fact that there seems to be ever-increasing attention given to what we can expect in our mobility future, along with many different opinions on the timeframes involved to get various aspects of this future off the ground.

Electrification, automation, micromobility, mobility as a service, flying vehicles – some of them we see gaining momentum now, others could be decades away. One thing is clear however. There is a need to think about all of the options within an ecosystem of mobility where all the parts play nicely together.

One area you may not have read too much about yet is one that vexes many urban dwellers regularly. However, it does not get much thought or attention – not in the mainstream media anyway: parking. If you have read about it, you have probably seen arguments of the impact of automated vehicles on this large part of our urban real estate. AVs are relevant to the solving of our parking woes, but so are many of the other changes happening now.

Another trend that is helping evolve our parking thinking is the availability of data. Accurate, up-to-date, wellanalysed data will not only be a driver of change, it will also be crucial to measuring the benefits or otherwise of that change. Let’s take a look at how some of the initiatives that are currently happening in parking aim to improve this under researched part of our urban landscape.

PARKING MANAGEMENT IN THE SMART MOBILITY AGE A current iMOVE project squarely in the area of data is Parking management in the smart mobility age. At its core, the project is looking at three things: • utilisation analysis and prediction of kerbside parking • data sharing between private and public off-street parking services

• linking parking utilisation and congestion in high traffic areas The lead on this project is Brisbane City Council. ‘The drive for this project is to make parking and journey planning easier and more convenient. We’re also looking to improve our data management for the transport technology that’s on the way, such as automation,’ said Brendan O’Keeffe, the council’s Policy, Strategy and Planning Manager.

There’s a distinct possibility that better management of parking in Australian cities will aid in the reduction in traffic congestion, due to a reduction in drivers circling around looking for a parking spot. There is currently little data on this, an issue which this project is looking to address. And while this project is taking place in Brisbane, many other urban areas are experiencing similar issues and could benefit from the increasing body of knowledge in this area.

FREE-FLOW BENEFITS Another iMOVE project directly related to parking is the investigation of free-flow parking for shared cars.

When you travel in most capital and larger Australian cities and towns, you’ll have noticed dedicated parking spaces for share cars.

These services make a valuable and growing contribution to our transport ecosystem. While it’s great that this option is available, as it stands now you have to pick up the car from its designated parking space and return it to that very same space. The Free-flow parking for car-sharing project is laying the early research groundwork for free-floating car sharing services.

This means that where a car share service exists in a city or town, customers will be able to pick up and return the share cars anywhere within a specified area, enhancing the flexibility and appeal of the service. The knock-on effect of this? Encouraging increased use of the service, which can drive a decrease in car usage and ownership, leading to a related decrease in traffic congestion.

The project lead is ITS Australia. Says Stacey Ryan, Policy Manager at ITS Australia, ‘We designed this research project to work with government, industry and key stakeholders to develop a framework and trial use-cases.

This will offer Councils and their communities the tools and evidence base on which to expand uptake of car-sharing and consider free-flowing car-share services’.

CHANGING PRIORITIES Another area gaining momentum – although not the subject of an iMOVE project to date - is the need to reconsider how we allocate space on our road and footpath networks. Over the past 100 years the automobile has been the king of urban spaces in Australia, but with all the change heading our way, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify all the room and priority afforded automobiles.

With a re-ordering of priority, we need to look at how

much space we allocate to motor vehicles for parking. A diminished focus on motor vehicles, and an accompanying refresh of the design of roads and footpaths to better accommodate walking, cycling, scootering, etc, will see improvements in safety, health, and well-being.

It will also help economically. In a shift to bringing active transport use more to the fore, Arup has estimated that a 10% increase in walking results in a 6.6% uplift to the local economy.

CONNECTIVITY Although we’ve talked here mainly from a perspective of parking, again we would like to highlight just how connected all changes in mobility are. Not only in the greater number of transport mode choices, but how parking, vehicles, land use, urban design, smart city thinking fits together, if it is done right.

In order to bring about coherent and well-balanced change we need to have all parties – all levels of government, business, transport planners and users – involved, and committed to working together to get the best outcomes. iMOVE aims to bring together the transport and mobility R&D innovation community together again in its second Transport of Tomorrow event (24 – 25 March 2020 in Sydney).

Keep an eye on the event website www.transportoftomorrow.com for early tickets.

Feature | Truck

Bus Bits Little known company OzPress Industries of Ballarat has built 50 new buses for use in Melbourne, part of a larger $16 million-dollar order for 100 buses which was placed by the Victorian government.

There are 50 buses coming from OzPress and 50 from Volgren.

as well as our ability to handle large-scale orders,” Mr Deiro said.

OzPress entered into a partnership with Gemilang Coachworks Australia to make the buses for Trasdev and wants to progress from delivery of diesel busses to electric or hydrogen in the future.

All 100 new buses are set to be delivered and taking passengers by July 2020.

The 50 Volgren low-floor city buses are built on a Scania chassis and feature USB charging facilities, improved CCTV capability, as well as bigger priority seating area. The 50 Volgren built buses will be entirely compliant of the Victorian Government’s Local Jobs First Policy, ensuring each vehicle is made with 60 per cent local content.

Thiago Deiro, Chief Executive Officer of Volgren said the company was proud of the fact that all 50 buses for Transdev Melbourne and Public Transport Victoria will be designed, engineered and fully assembled in Dandenong, using locally sourced components.

“Over the past four decades, Volgren has become part of an extensive and thriving south-east Melbourne manufacturing ecosystem. Directly, Volgren employs more than 200 people in Victoria alone and indirectly, over 500 people across 50 local suppliers who have become a key extension of our business,” he said.

“The Victorian Government’s decision to modernise, expand and upgrade Melbourne’s bus network secures those local jobs and supports the growing supply chain of local businesses.”

“Volgren is now responsible for close to two in every three route buses sold in Australia.

This latest delivery for Transdev is another endorsement of our high-quality vehicles,

Now in South Australia there is a free autonomous bus trial that will deliver a service north of Adelaide. Running approximately every half hour on weekdays, the EasyMile EZ10 autonomous electric bus will carry passengers from the Munno Para Railway Station to the Playford Alive Township.

The Munno Para service is phase two of the Playford Connect autonomous bus trial, following on from phase one which provided a free park and ride service from the Lionsgate Carpark through to the Lyell McEwin Hospital in Elizabeth Vale from October 2018 to June 2019.

Phase two of the trial is a joint project between the City of Playford, French autonomous vehicle manufacturer EasyMile, local intelligent transport system specialists SAGE Automation and the State Government.

“The Marshall Government is continuing to explore innovative opportunities to provide better public transport services,” said Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government Stephan Knoll.

“This trial is a great example of how we can embrace new technology to deliver better services and fill gaps that exist in our network.

“South Australia is ahead of the curve in this space having launched Australia’s first on-road trial on an autonomous shuttle at Tonsley in June last year.

“The Marshall Government has supported this trial through the Future Mobility Lab Fund.

“This fund aims to encourage and stimulate developments in connected and autonomous vehicles, and position South Australia at the forefront of these emerging technologies.”

Greg Giraud, Managing Director for EasyMile ANZ, said autonomous vehicles will change the way we deliver passenger transit in future and this trial is a great opportunity to showcase how our technology can provide new mobility solutions and bridge the gap for those first and last miles.

“As the project takes place in an open road environment, it is also about understanding how passengers and other road users interact with driverless technology,” said Mr Giraud.

“We see the City of Playford and more generally the Adelaide Metropolitan Area as ideal environments for the integration of autonomous shuttles to help address public transport challenges.

Damian Hewitt, General Manager Transport for SAGE Group said partnering on the project was an exciting evolution of the recent autonomous vehicle trials in South Australia.

“This trial is particularly important in preparation of vehicle performance in mixed traffic conditions,” said Mr Hewitt.

“Partnering with Easy Mile and being responsible for the operation of the trial enables SAGE to deploy technologies that enhance safety performance, user experience and increased patronage on public transport.”

IVECO Fit Bit – no Fit Cab IVECO unveiled a new concept truck at the global launch of the new IVECO WAY range: the new IVECO FIT CAB, a special customer–centric concept that will be the object of a co-working process involving customers.

IVECO will use the concepts to conduct a series of customer workshops with drivers and owners during all the races of the 2019 European Truck Racing Championship, starting from 19 July in Nürburgring (Germany).

During the workshops, the IVECO team will actively work together with the drivers and owners to gather input. At completion of this consultation, IVECO will include feedback in the final development phase.

The IVECO FIT CAB takes driver-centricity 18 | September 2019

further than ever before with the aim of improving the wellbeing, comfort and performance of a driver, and mitigating the consequences of long driving hours.

With a sporty livery inspired by fitness programs the cab’s additional role as a gym on wheels is exposed with in-cab and exterior devices for improving the driver’s mobility, stability, strength and overall fitness.

Dedicated hooks and anchor points are integrated into the exterior to host specifically

designed accessories. The retractable front step can double up as a training tool.

The interior of the cab bristles with gym equipment, such as a wall-integrated multidirectional pulley, a roof-integrated folded multi-grip solution, and a functional package that includes resistance bands, sliders and weights.

Mobility | Feature

The Future of Mobility is here We can very easily fall into the trap of thinking that the future of mobility is solely about automobiles of tomorrow, in some cases quite literally tomorrow but that would be putting on blinkers as mobility is undergoing a huge transformation. A transformation as big as the one that happened from horse and carriage to car, it’s just not quite as visually obvious.

Our whole mobility ecosystem is changing as well as the technology that supports it.

venture between Bosch and Mercedes Benz (Daimler).

While the Future of Mobility event held at Bosch HQ in Clayton, Victoria concentrated heavily on the makers of mainstream mobility such as the car manufacturers and the suppliers that support them, it was near the end of the afternoon that the innovators were let loose.

This automated parking service is seen as an important milestone on the way to autonomous driving. The pilot solution in the parking garage of the Mercedes-Benz Museum is the world’s first infrastructure-assisted solution for an automated drive up and park service as a genuine mixed operation.

Bosch hosts mobility program

Existing parking garages can be retrofitted with the infrastructure technology. For the parking garage operator, driverless parking results in more efficient use of the parking space available, up to 20 percent more vehicles fit into the same area. The automated valet parking service is accessed via a smartphone app and requires no safety driver.

This makes it the world’s first fully automated driverless SAE Level 4 parking function to be officially approved for everyday use.

Nikki Gerling, General Manager – Automotive Aftermarket, Robert Bosch Australia opened the event on 27 August.

“Bosch believes that the key to a sustainable future of mobility is automated and electrified driving via connectivity,” she said. “Bosch has pledged a 4b euro of investment into research and development for automated driving by 2022, it has more than 5000 engineers working globally towards automated driving this is double the level from 2017.

“We are a part of that effort here in Australia with over 200 engineers based in Melbourne and most of these focused on automated projects and in January this year we were granted the first Australian automated driving system permit for on-road testing of highly automated driving systems.”

A smartphone on wheels Julian Broadbent, Chief Executive Officer of Applied Electric Vehicles (AEV) aka AEV Robotics, had by far the most innovative presentation – a digital car, or more accurately a digital platform. As he said his company is

not on the traditional trajectory – they used a clean sheet approach to the vehicle of tomorrow and have designed a platform on which you can place the vehicle you want or need, from a four-seater car to a delivery van.

Mr Broadbent was a long time engineer with Holden and also in the US with General Motors so he does know something of the industry and how it works.

“Our goal is to address what life looks like in the cities,” he said. “We saw a great opportunity for step change. We see ourselves as a technology company … more than an automaker.”

As Mr Broadbent said, his company is not there to take over from car companies, they will continue to exist and do amazing things but ultimately speaking it’s an industry that’s been perfected over a hundred years and the vehicles are typically made in the same way, using the same components.

For car makers it’s about evolution, for AEV it’s about a new vision, a digital vehicle.

It was while Mr Broadbent was working in Detroit and interacting with Silicon Valley companies that he began to think about

Bosch is anticipating 5b Euro in sales of electro-mobility related componentry and systems by 2025, this is more than 10 times the level achieved last year.

“Bosch invested 8m Euro in 2018 acquiring 30 electro-mobility projects,” Ms Gerling said.

“One example was to take full ownership over a 50/50 venture with Daimler called EMmotive which has already produced more than 50,000 electric motors for companies such as Daimler, Ford, Fiat, Volvo and Peugeot.”

With that Ms Gerling showed a video of a self parking vehicle system developed as a joint www.saea.com.au

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Feature | Mobility

mobility in a different light. IT was beginning to make its mark on the car industry as a disrupter. He has said that no one had then created the digital vehicle, so he did in Australia.

A vehicle that can be programmed, controlled and configured like an electronic device.

“At AEV we said what if we made it more like a technology device, what if we made it differently,” he said. Typically, it takes more than 50 companies to produce a normal car.

“We took inspiration from something else in our lives that is something simple and does a really good job,” Mr Broadbent was talking about the smartphone.

“Maybe we could make an iPhone on wheels, what would that solve, how would it make the movement of goods or people in an urban environment better. So, we have a smartphone on wheels.”

What that means is that AEV’s digital base can be reconfigured by installing different pods, it can transport people or goods, and it is scalable; it can be any type of urban vehicle you want – it’s a modular vehicle system. It’s about solving transport problems in a city.

“IT companies are extremely interested in what we are doing because now we’ve liberated IT companies that are trying to provide ride sharing apps or parcel delivery apps ... we’ve now liberated organisations that are coming up with new business models that don’t find it easy to work with the traditional models of automobiles.”

Not surprisingly rather than launch the concept at a car show, AEV launched the concept at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

What was shown was described as an electronic skateboard, which was light, had four-wheel steer with a very attractive pod on top.

a Porsche for comfort or convenience, with trucks it’s a financial choice.

This is still a concept and a production model has not been released, neither is there much information available about it just snippets here and there but if it comes to fruition it will be a remarkable feat and a remarkable package.

“If you don’t choose efficiency your competition will, your competition will then have a lower cost to transport that freight – they will win business, you will lose business, they will win and you will go out of business. It’s a very, very, simple equation.

Delivering electrification

“Fundamentally an electric vehicle is limited by range and our vehicles are between 200 and 350kms depending on the gross specification, the type of road you travel on and the sort of freight you cart.

SEA conjures up visions of fishes and boats when in fact it has almost nothing to do with them, unless of course it is to transport seafood. SEA or SEA Electric is in the business of transforming established vehicles, turning transport vehicles like conventional trucks and vans into electric trucks and vans.

All the main drivetrain mechanicals are removed from the donor vehicle, which is then known as a ‘glider’. These gliders have been a variety of heavy and light trucks from manufacturers such as Mercedes Benz, IVECO, Hino or Isuzu. The mechanicals are then replaced with an electric power unit employing 3-phase power. Five drivetrains are available.

At this point it’s a good thing to remember the uses of trucks versus cars; cars are often an emotive choice of transport – you don’t buy 20 | September 2019

“The only reason you choose a particular mode of transport to cart stuff around in is efficiency,” Glen Walker, Regional Director – ANZ, SEA Electric said.

“They generally start out empty and they spend their day filling up and they then empty what they fill up and return back to base. Or they start full and deliver their goods at a number of drop offs and return to base empty. It’s an ideal application for our vehicles.”

Every night they can be powered-up in readiness for the next day’s work.

The applications where the SEA powered trucks are working in Australia is typically garbage trucks, delivery vans and trucks, tippers and refrigerated trucks.

The company has active programs in a number of overseas locations including work with two

OEMs in North America for school bus and delivery van applications, as well as work in South Africa, Israel, Thailand, New Zealand and Canada. In Australia SEA is also working to develop smaller vehicles such as trade utility vehicles and smaller vans.

Car makers in the main stream Four representatives from the car makers spoke; Ben Warren – national manager electrification and mobility from Nissan, Matthew Macleod – manager future technologies and mobility from Toyota, Trent McNeil – advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) engineer from Ford, and Shawn Ticehurst who is the product planning and pricing director for Audi.

Toyota’s talk focussed on their fuel cell vehicles and technology which we have already covered in some detail in the June 2019 issue of VTE. Mr Warren discussed in very general terms why Nissan EVs are more than just an exciting mobility solution speaking about their quiet operation and significant power, and their convenience.

He said that EVs were more convenient than traditional fuel vehicles because they charge overnight and you don’t need to make stops at service stations to fill up. This is essentially true but there are always the issues of distance to consider however, as he said

Mobility | Feature

charging stations are springing up on the highways and freeways as well as car parks though these are still in their infancy.

“The automotive industry, it’s going through a period of change with the powertrain technologies, the automation... the industry is going to change more in the next 10 years than in the last 50,” he said while also discussing methods about we now use to generate electricity and how will we do so in the future saying that Australia has the highest take up of household solar with one in five households having this ability.

One of the more interesting aspects of his presentation centred on the Leaf’s ability to not only absorb power but to also distribute it.

“Like all electric vehicles, the Nissan Leaf needs to be charged but it can also discharge the power to power your home...you can pair it up with your solar system and use it at times when the renewables aren’t available. What you’ve got is the world’s sexiest battery,” he said. This is certainly a consideration that is noteworthy as you can use the car as an energy asset, and one that is portable.

Ford’s Trent McNeil followed with a talk on how AVs will improve lives, starting with a brief explanation of the number of Ford engineers still working in Australia stating that Ford is still the largest OEM in Australia and has around 2000 auto engineers, designers and technology specialists with teams

working mainly on traditional vehicles and also locals working on other mobility solutions.

Mr McNeil pointed out that currently the average motor vehicle commute time in Melbourne is 86 minutes for a daily commute, which means that traffic and transport is inefficient and autonomous vehicles may provide a solution.

“In 2009 Ford started real world tests of autonomous vehicles in Detroit and California since then company has worked on two parallel development lines – the self driving research line and the driver assist technologies line,” he said.

“The self driving stream aims to have an SAE level 4 autonomous vehicle on the roads in North America by 2021.

“The driver assistance stream focusses on the everyday driver ... making the journey easier, safer and more affordable; getting you to places with less stress and more time to spare. This is the stream I work in and what I’m passionate about.”

Some autonomous driving systems are already in use in many cars including things such as intelligent adaptive cruise control, lane assist etc but he said that in the future they will develop into systems that allow hands free driving with vehicles also interacting with each other and with infrastructure allowing better travel times, less fuel consumption and less congestion.

Shawn Ticehurst of Audi was the final speaker in this set and he said his focus was on three main areas: education, collaboration and driving enjoyment.

To demonstrate his final point, the company had its e-tron Audi parked outside – it is a preview of a next generation electric supercar, a 500kW electric car without autonomous functions because for some customers that’s what they want.

He was one of the few speakers who spent time talking about how drivers of the future will need to be educated to work with their new mobility vehicles. Even now driver and machine are more interactive than ever with virtual cockpits, voice commands and other features, the next sept is driver assistance items and there is a need to teach drivers when and how to use these new systems.

He said that already Audi had shown its A8 which is capable of SAE level 3 autonomous driving and is supported by 24 sensors - the technology is ready now but the infrastructure and legislation is not.

“The next step to autonomous vehicles is a leap, arguably the biggest one we’ve ever made in the scope of the automotive industry in recent years,” he said.

“Collaboration will play an important role, car companies are already starting to do that to work towards the future and it happened this year where we, together with two of our traditional rivals and another group of providers, collaborated on a white paper around 12 guiding principles called Safety First for Automated Driving and includes guidelines around elements of design, building, testing, validating and operating the technology within autonomous vehicles.

“We also need to show the legislators how this technology will work and demonstrate how good it is. We also need to create homologation rules around them that will ensure all manufacturers understand how this driving environment will work.”

He finished by saying that: “At all stages in front of us we need to ensure we bring everyone with us together along the way, government, industry and most important of all the customer.”

www.saea.com.au

VTE | 21

Feature | Realtime FSAE

School’s in with Real Time Learning and STEM How many times have we heard that we now need to be a nation of smart people, producing smart things; a high-tech economy in a very high tech world. A lovely and broad sweeping statement but the reality is that we need to find our smarts and develop them.

One organisation that is doing this is Real Time Learning (RTL) in Melbourne, and before we get on to how this organisation is supporting STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education it’s good to note that it is not just working with students that have a strong STEM bent.

Because while STEM is certainly the way forward for manufacturing in Australia it must be supported by a host of other disciplines and the world is also a greater place than simply work. RTL also mentors students who want to work in media, environment, entrepreneurs, marketing, IT and those who want to work in community services. These are all jobs that are jobs of the future.

Certainly, we are focussing on those who are in the RTL STEM workshop as well as those senior or past RTL students who are now facilitators to the younger ones. And when I say young, I do mean young as some of the kids currently building mechanical arms are still in primary school.

Every Wednesday evening 12 school kids from grades 5 to 8 come to Bosch HQ in Clayton, Victoria and spend from 5.30pm until 8.30pm learning, that’s after a whole day of school and some of these kids are only 10 years-old. They are mentored by past RTL students, called facilitators, who themselves are studying at university or have just entered the workforce – they too are putting in long hours to make sure that they are giving back. Typically, around eight facilitators attend each session.

So far there have been 68 students representing nearly 30 schools have participated in the Starter Workshop and more than half have gone on to the Extension Workshops.

There are no instructions for building the mechanical arms that these youngsters are to make, there are no instructions that come with the parts, there’s no Ikea join A to B and then add C. The youngsters are taught how to program, how to code, how to do wiring, how to use tools but not how to make their mechanical arm, they must work that out themselves. The facilitators are there to guide them not instruct them.

Considering their ages are from 10 to 13 years that’s pretty testing stuff. But after talking with some of them I realise that these are not ordinary school kids, these are the brightest.

They have been invited into this special course after applying and running the rounds of interviews to be selected. These are the kids that will be Australia’s future in engineering – whether that is mechanical, electrical, 22 | September 2019

robotics, automation or whatever new fields spring up in the future.

Here’s a few of them:

Gemma Wildermuth (14) is designing a fodder machine “I’ve come up with a design for an automatic fodder machine, so what I’ve done is self sufficient, it’s designed to be able to run when it’s not connected to power – what it does is it produces fodder,” Gemma said.

“It’s not necessarily a new design of a machine it’s a different way of doing it. The way I’ve designed it, instead of it being connected to a main power source it can be completely off grid. And I have come up with different designs to deal with the other main issue which is mould.

“If mould contaminates it then it contaminates the whole supply of food and you have to completely clean out the whole system, and sterilise the inside of the machine which means a loss of money and a loss of time – it’s just not efficient. So, I’ve come up with a few designs.

“I had seen the issues with current fodder machines and I’d spoken with different experts and not just experts but also farmers and talked to them about what the issues were.

I’ve spoken with people on different ways on how I can battle this issue.”

Gemma has been involved with the RTL STEM program for about 9-10 months and has been through the starter workshops, the extension program and now she is a junior facilitator.

“I’ve always had an interest in science, technology and maths, my mother would call me a nerd,” she said jokingly.

When Gemma said, she was always interested, it was more than a fleeting interest; during a trip to the US with her parents they were visiting the California Science Centre when she saw a banner hanging from the ceiling about a young scientists’ summer camp program and in her words “it looked so exciting” that she had to attend. She applied to attend the following year and was accepted.

There she went through different types of

Gemma Wildermuth

engineering and the one that most interested her was mechanical and robotic leading her to participate in a robotics competition and then when she saw the opportunity she applied for the RTL STEM program.

“I think it’s amazing being a facilitator for this program because it helps me see how I can help,” she said. “It helps me to say ‘look at this from a different perspective’, I look at helping them to figure it out for themselves.

“Out of the Real Time program, it’s given me experience and also helped me to learn how to collaborate with people and given me the basic skills of how to program, how to build things without instructions – you need to analyse and solve.

“I think I came in knowing I was going to learn a lot and that this is a very special program to be a part of and it just exceeded my expectations.”

Sanjay Ravichandran (14) entered the TiE competition “I started the program in year 7 and I was really interested in science and electronics at that time,” Sanjay said. “Around that same time, I did a bit of Arduino (Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software) and a bit of Mindstorms (Lego Mindstorms is a programmable robotics series) and my interest in those field led me here, which has led me to even more opportunities.”

As an example, Sanjay said that earlier this year a group of students who were in the TiE competition asked him to build a prototype of their project and the team then spent four or five months learning about it and collaborating.

“It was a university student, a Year 8 student

Sanjay Ravichandran

Realtime FSAE | Feature

and myself who joined together to help.

The university student helped with the electronics side of that and the Year 8 student helped out with the science. I did the actual manufacturing – 3D printer. We made a portable automatic toilet. Although we were unsuccessful we learnt quite a bit.”

Despite the big age difference the project was cohesive and together they made a viable product.

The TiE Young Entrepreneurs competition is a program designed to teach entrepreneurship and business skills to high school students through practical experience and mentoring.

The program aims to educate students to become the next generation of entrepreneurs by taking their creative innovations and turning them into business plans. The students learn business strategy, leadership, marketing and finance, together with teambuilding and presentation skills.

Sanjay started the RTL STEM program when he was in Year 7 and he is now in Year 9.

“You get so many opportunities with the program, you learn how to collaborate, you learn how to communicate your ideas to others, and for me personally those are the most important but there’s also the technical side; learning how to code, how to build and how to apply this knowledge to other projects.

“I’m thinking about maybe doing both the tech and business side as well, maybe commerce and electronic engineering because if you want to communicate your ideas to others, to know how to pitch your ideas to others you need commerce.

“I really like maths, there are many questions in maths that are open ended there might be a final answer but there may be five or six different ways to get to the answer. It’s exploring I like.

“I was thinking of improving my public speaking so I’m going to look at joining the toastmasters’ club, and there are other competitions I would like to do.”

Sanjay has been accepted into Melbourne High School and before that he was at Box Hill High School – a school with a gifted students program and an engineering faculty both of which he was involved with.

Oliver Mamers (13) building a race car Looking at Ollie you may think he is a lot older than 13 as he is quite tall and he has the drive of someone older, his drive is in both senses – to drive and a drive to design and build.

He is absolutely besotted with cars which is

Oliver Mamers www.saea.com.au

just as well since his father also has a passion for cars and racing but it is Ollie who has set himself tasks beyond what his father can do.

Currently Ollie is working on a Hyundai Excel for the one make series; he has been racing karts but his large frame put him at too much of a disadvantage.

He doesn’t believe he is particularly maths oriented but perhaps that is because he is unaware of the amount of maths he uses.

He has taught himself to use CAD design programs with a 3D printer and so far, has designed and manufactured clips, dash fascias, gauge holders and brake ducts.

“I needed to fit some extra gauges [to the Excel] and wanted to make up a housing for them,” he said, so he designed and printed out a prototype housing. “It’s a first prototype and I need to make some mods.”

Shreya Ramesh and Zoe Yap are engineering university students and facilitators “I did VCE then went to uni not knowing what to do, I picked up mechatronics engineering and science and I had zero idea of what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted something in engineering. Robotics was an interesting field and I was very keen on motorsports so I had my eyes on it,” explained Shreya.

“After a few years (of university) I got involved in a few extra curricular activities like going abroad to Malaysia as an exchange ... then I interned in a manufacturing company there.

“I got more involved with Robogals in 2017 and that’s how I met Luke (Luke Kerr CEO of RTL) and joined the Real Time Learning program.

“I was also in my final year of uni and I needed to start looking at my final year project and that’s when (Monash) motorsport advertised that they needed people for the development of their driverless race and that’s how I got in.

“I’m now at Deloittes, I started in July. I’m part of the consulting engineering department we are more techie, at the moment in my rotation I’m testing for quality engineering.”

Zoe is in the Monash motorsport team on the business side and does mechatronics engineering and commerce.

“I fell into engineering, I went to a girls’ school and STEM wasn’t emphasised. I really enjoyed maths and science, I did university level chemistry in high school and really enjoyed it. I went to uni thinking I would do chemical engineering.

“At Monash, we try all the engineering disciplines before we pick one. I thought I would do chemical engineering until I did it and I hated it. I enjoyed the mechanical unit and also liked the electrical so put them together and did mechatronics. ‘ “I joined the team in 2018 and didn’t know of Monash Motorsport until I saw them ... my dad is really into F1. I applied for the team in the business section because at the time I wasn’t ready for a technical commitment and

Shreya Ramesh and Zoe Yap

found that I really enjoyed the business aspect of it.

Zoe said that people don’t realise that Formula SAE has a business side but luckily Monash has a big team of around 100 people and part of that is around creating business relationships.

“We get to promote FSAE and get to tell people it exists and get to encourage a lot more females to get involved in motorsport,” she said. “It’s getting bigger with the driverless section, we developed the first driverless Formula SAE car and demonstrated it on 4 August (2019).”

When Shreya came to her very first workshop she was astonished as she said the kids had such a good platform to try something.

One of the biggest take aways was the satisfaction towards the end of every class – it’s about trying, about giving it a shot which is something that’s sometimes lost at school.

“I know if I’d have had this opportunity when I was growing up it would have been so amazing, I would have loved every bit of it – you see that enthusiasm in them. It makes you want to come back, to support them,” she said.

Zoe said that because the kids have applied to enter the program they’re already interested and some of them have already tinkered with things on their own like coding.

“They’re learning Arduino now, how to make circuits, those are all things I learnt at first year university and they are learning about engineering at 12, I learnt about it at about 18 and I think that’s so valuable.

“I think it’s amazing that they have the desire to go on and pursue something out of school (hours). For some of them it’s really out of the way but they have the passion and interest to do this.

“It’s not just the technical skills you learn through these workshops, you learn how to try, learn how to not give up when something doesn’t work, and to be proactive and think creatively to solve problems.

“Those skills are so applicable to any field, but especially to engineering. If I was young and got this opportunity then I think university would have been a lot easier at the start because a lot of things I was learning I would have done years beforehand.”

Now all we need to do with these young people, both the RTL STEM group and their facilitators, is to work out how to keep them in Australia.

VTE | 23

Feature | National Manufacturing Summit

National Manufacturing Summit – Skills for the Future Skills was really the only topic at the recently held National Manufacturing Summit which was in held at The Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne’s east despite a few speakers venturing into other areas, such as Professor Michelle Gee. And it was technical and trade skills that were pinpointed as tools for the future.

The skills focus was more on VET and TAFE streams, as there is an alarming shortage of tradespeople already, and not many apprentices in the making. In coming years with the large cohort of retiring tradespeople it will become a significant issue for manufacturing.

While it may not seem to be a problem to be dealt with by engineers, it will be a problem for engineers of the future when their ideas cannot be produced in Australia.

In 2018, the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) research conducted research that showed that 75 percent of employers found it difficult to recruit suitably qualified or skilled people. Most in demand are technicians and trades workers.

There is no doubt that Australia requires an increase in skilled, qualified tradespeople to meet demand on major projects in defence, shipbuilding, aerospace, infrastructure, rolling stock and resources.

The manufacturing sector is experiencing growth and industry participants continue to cite workforce capability as an ongoing challenge. Decades of state and federal government policies have diminished the role of the vocational education and training (VET) sector and TAFE. Skilled tradespeople and technicians are scarce with 34 percent of Australian employers saying that filling job vacancies is increasingly difficult, mainly due to lack of applicants (25 percent), lack of skills (21 percent), and lack of experience (19 percent).

Recent labour force data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that employment growth among manufacturers rose by 86,000 over the past 12 months, which is the highest growth rate of any Australian industry and there is a projected employment growth rate

24 | September 2019

of 7.2 percent over the next five years for structural steel and welding trade workers.

It fell to the Hon Gayle Tierney, Victorian Minister for Skills and Education to be the opening keynote speaker for the event and she focussed on the state of manufacturing in Victoria and Australia as a whole.

“Victorian manufacturing is going through a transition, we all know it’s going from a sector dominated by automotive manufacturing to a more diverse mix,” she said.

She spoke on the opportunities for work in the defence, aerospace, biomedical, and other industries as the high growth manufacturing sectors for the future.

Recently appointed Federal Shadow Minister for Employment and Industry, the Hon Brendan O’Connor, also spoke at the event.

“For me, the reason I wanted to work in this area is it’s a critical area for our economy and this country,” he said. “…we live in the most remarkable era, of human innovation and technological advancement. And while this an exciting time, the impacts of technological change on work on life and society brings with it along with it a great deal of excitement and passion a fair share of anxieties.

“It is the responsibility of a number of players, most certainly government to make sure that those profound impacts benefit businesses and also benefit workers, and society as a whole.”

And really that was the core of the event, reviewing how this technological change and Industry 4.0 affects companies in terms of employees and training. In that respect, other speakers included representatives from TAFE, the Ai Group, Nick Howie from the recently established Naval Shipbuilding College and industry leaders from different manufacturing sectors including BAE Systems.

“The overriding commitment that Labor made to increase investment in research and development remains a commitment.

By investing in research and development (R&D), government provides the resources for universities and research institutions to produce results that inspire investment by private industry,” Minister O’Connor said.

Professor Michelle Gee, director of the Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre and Professor of

Aerospace Engineering & Aviation RMIT gave her presentation just before Minister O’Conner, and focussed on how business and industry should and could work together.

She noted that the convergence of digitised machine parts, improved connectivity and emerging Industry 4.0 technologies has begun to shape global aerospace and defence value chains.

She outlined a number of ways universities and higher education establishments are being assisted and promoted to work together through the use government incentives. She noted that to work together more effectively universities and industry should leverage all of the universities’ expertise and facilities, focus on the end game which she said was the customer’s needs.

They should support and enable immersion of personnel across sectors and work together across universities to build cross-institutional capability to complete the value chain.

Currently there is $1.6b devoted to driving cooperation between the two with programs such as the Next Generation Technologies Fund for Defence Science and Technology which has funding of $730m aimed at space capabilities, material sciences, quantum technologies and autonomous systems among others. The Defence Innovation Hub has funding of $640m and the Centre for Defence Industry Capability has $230m.

Ms Gee noted that one of the stumbling blocks to cooperation between these sectors was their different values with universities not understanding the needs of industry when it came to matters such as IP and the need for a competitive advantage as universities were generally in business of divulging all research and results. Obviously, this is something that goes against the grain for competing companies searching for an edge in business.

However, the main thrust of this summit was definitely in the TAFE area as without a new breed of skilled technicians and tradespeople there was no way to utilise emerging technologies.

MEAA | Feature

Nuksit Noomwongs and Pakpum Somboon Chulalongkorn University

Study on Drowsy Driving Behavior from Driver Steering Pattern and Lane Offset Using Driving Simulator Introduction Majority of vehicle accidents is responded by human factors and road situations.

These records result in the plenty number of researches intended to reduce the vehicle accidents and solve the problem on human factors. The main human factors leading to accidents is driving behaviors including consuming exceed amount of alcohol and drug consumption, the use of cellphone, and driver fatigue. Moreover, emotion states; such as shock, anxiety, stress, drowsiness, and depression, can affect the attention and behavior of driver. This research focus on the element of drowsiness since it is hard to detect and sometimes unavoidable.

From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [1], 56,000 crashed, 33,000 injuries and 736 deaths in 2015 involving with drowsy driving. The warning signs of drowsy driving are yawning or blinking frequently, drifting from the lane and difficulty remembering the previous few miles driving. In this research, we aim to analyze the response time of the drivers and their driving behavior in order to clarify the state of drowsiness and to be able to use this information to reduce the risk of the accident that might occur. The experiment and information collecting were tested with the driver subjects under selected driving conditions. With the help of Driving Simulator, access to the driving characteristic data is granted and other system such as reaction time device could be installed to work in synchrony. It also offers a flexibility of designing the road and environment which correspond to the exact condition that the researcher want to test. Also, drive simulator allows user to design the scenario which assign other vehicle to drive along the road, an accident that occur on the road and the traffic light at each intersection.

accident rate. Information of the current research conducting on drowsiness and driving characteristics of the driver were considered in order to understand how to determine the drowsiness level and how to analyze the driving characteristic. Hyun Yang et all [2] have done research on Detection of Driver Fatigue Caused by Sleep Deprivation to find any differences and commonalities of the result data from two specific group of drivers which are partial sleep-deprivation and non-sleep-deprivation. The level of sleep deprivation is determined by the amount of sleep that each subjects had before the test day. The time for doing the experiment is also considered for each level of sleep deprivation. Five different conditions are given to the subjects to drive on the drive simulator system. The five different conditions used are a straight road without any disturbances, a straight road with a lead vehicle, a straight road with disturbances, a straight road with changes in steering dynamics and a curved road. The driving experiment of this research also equipped with the second task techniques which periodically request the response from the subjects. The second tasks techniques include auditory ringing signal which driver were instructed to press the button immediately after hearing the signal, visual symbol which driver were instructed to press the button immediately after recognizing the symbol, and lane changing sign driver were instructed to

ABSTRACT Drowsiness has been one of the major reasons of road fatality over a decade because the effect of drowsiness is trying to shut down both mind and body. That means drivers are unable to completely control the car while trapped in an unconscious state. It will lead to a several number of casualties on road. In this research, two sets of people, partial sleep-deprivation and non-sleep-deprivation, are tested on the driving simulator. Two methods were used in this study to identify driver drowsiness.

First, driving behavior focusing on steering pattern. And secondly, vehicle offset from the lane center. The tests were carried out on the designed scenarios in the Driving Simulator. The scenarios are such as following straight lane with vehicle along the road, following curve lane without other cars, car following on a single lane and following straight lane without other cars.

From the results, there are significant results that can roughly separate drowsy driver from regular driver. The graph of both root mean square error with threshold or RMT and steering handling pattern can be interpreted that drowsy people perform worse than non-drowsy people. The result from both methods shows that drowsy people perform worse than nondrowsy people since all the average line of RMT are above the non-drowsy people. Among the three condition, car following, straight lane tracking and curve lane tracking, straight lane tracking has the most significant result.

On the other hand, steering handling data shows a very interesting and unique results.

The average steering handling frequency of the partial-sleep deprivation is almost twice from the nonsleep deprivation. In term of performance, the more the frequency of steering is shown, the worse driving efficiency will be.

Background It is very difficult to measure the level of drowsiness. Many have tried detecting the eyelid closure time of the driver to determine the drowsiness level. However, the eye tracking method has showed many failures due to different shape of face, uncertainties of environment and the distance between driver and the camera. Therefore, this research rather focuses on the driving characteristic of the driver to predict and reduce the car www.saea.com.au

VTE | 25

Feature | MEAA

change the lane immediately according to the appeared sign. Then, the recognition of the subjects from these tasks were examined by using their reaction time. The results of this experiment imply that subjects having partially sleepdeprivation has worse performance comparing to subjects having non-sleep deprivation in all five conditions stated previously. Also, the drowsiness will have the greater effect on the second task techniques or rule-based task rather than skill-based task or routine take such as driving skill.

Methodology and Experimental Setup The methodology of this research is shown in Figure 1. First, participants are selected to drive in the Driving Simulator with a reaction time recording device attaching in the Driving Simulator front panel. The scenarios and situations that might affect the drowsiness of the driver are prepared and used in the Driving Simulator. Both data from Driving Simulator and reaction time recording device are recorded synchronously. After that, both data will be analyzed to find a relationship.

Driving Simulator (DS) Road accidents caused by drowsiness are most likely to occur between 12am and 6am [3]. Therefore, the environment and situation in Driving Simulator is designed according to this time by adjusting the time in the DS to be at midnight and setting fog to reduce visibility of the driver. A specific scenario affecting drowsy behavior such as car following, stopping cars, crashed cars, and traffic light is also added to detect the difference.

Moreover, some significant sign that might lead to accident is also added, for example, the difference between driving in a traffic and driving alone. The DS used in this experiment is Forum8 DS as shown in Figure 2. Forum8 DS is used widely for human factors, road safety and vehicle development

Testing Environment The testing room temperature and environment has been adjusted in order to make the subjects feel drowsy. According to [4] the Sleep Medicine division of Harvard Medical school, the external factors that can induce the sleep are light, noise, and temperature. Then, the controlled environment parameters are used according to this research. Firstly, all of the light in the room is turn-off because darkness will cue the brain to make melatonin which tell the interior body clock that it’s time to sleep and it can also reduce the cognition of the subjects. Secondly, the room is set to be quiet by allowing only the subject and the team member to stay in the room in order to make it easier to control the noise in the room. Lastly, the temperature is set to be 23 degree Celsius which is lower than the body temperature of the subjects in order to reduce the body temperature and increase the drowsiness.

26 | September 2019

MEAA | Feature

the drowsy level of the subjects since it is a long straight road with no distract elements.

Furthermore, the traffic light is established between the first road and the second road, and between the second road and third road in order to examine the response of the subjects to the turning instruction and traffic light. The time in the drive simulator is adjusted to be at midnight, and the fog in the atmosphere is set in order to reduce the visibility of the subjects.

Experimental Methods

Driving Route Scenario The Driving route is designed to represent the driving scenario which happened on the real road. The road is placed on the flat ground. The driving route consists of 5 connected roads so that it become one continued route illustrated in Figure 4.

The driving distance for one experiment is 10.5 kilometers and the time used for one experiment is between 7 and 8 minutes depend on driving characteristics of each subjects. Each established road is designed to have a different characteristic so that the difference between driving data can be seen and analyzed. The first and second road are designed to be three lane straight road with moving vehicle, stopped vehicle, and www.saea.com.au

crash situation along the road (Figure 5). The intention of the first two roads is to make the subjects to be familiar with the drive simulator system. The third road is designed to be three lane serpentine or curve road without any vehicle along the road (Figure 6), this road will test the steering wheel handling ability of the subjects as they will be instructed to maintain the car in the middle lane of the road.

The fourth road is designed to be one lane straight road with the vehicle drive slowly at the velocity of 50 kilometers per hour ahead, this road will test the concentration of the subjects as they have to follow and try to maintain the distance from leading car (Figure 7). The fifth road is designed to be one lane straight highway without any vehicle along the road (Figure 8), this road will increase

Approximately 60% of drivers have driven a vehicle in drowsiness and 37% of them admit being falling asleep behind the wheel [3].

Moreover, adults between 17 to 24 years old tend to drive while drowsy because they think they can push through their limit. Most people with this age are students. They often get a sleep less than 5 hours which increases the accident caused by drowsiness around 20%.

In this research, 10 subjects were selected to participate in the experiment. The subjects are the students with the age between 20-22 years old. From 10 subjects, 6 subjects are males and the rest are females. The basic constraint that we set to distinguish drowsy people from normal people is the sleep duration in each day which we consider people who sleeps less than 5 hours to be drowsy people [3]. In order to be able to collect the actual time of sleeping in each day, the standard device that can collect the sleeping time which is a smartwatch activity tracker is used to record the overall sleeping time of the subjects for two days prior to the experiment.

To make the experiment to be more clarified, the sleeping period considered in the experiment is divided into two states; sleep deprivation and non-sleep deprivation. The sleep deprivation is the state when subjects sleep less than 5 hours which resulted in 10 times more crash rate comparing to nonsleep deprivation which is the state when subjects sleep at least 7-8 hours according to AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety [5]. The driving experiment testing with each subject are divided into two experiments which are non-sleep deprivation test and partial sleep deprivation test in order to precisely differentiate the driving characteristics and driving behaviors between these two conditions. The resting interval between the test of each is chosen to be more than 2 days so that the subjects can have enough time to adjust their sleeping behavior. After the driving data of subjects from drive simulator is collected, the data will be divided according to the scenario appeared in the drive simulator; curve lane tracking, car following, and lane tracking. The offset from road center data of each scenario will be gathered to calculate root mean square error with threshold or RMT to find the tendency of lane deviating. RMT is used for revealing the driving characteristics of driver’s tracking performance. During the lane tracking, the driver tries to keep his car VTE | 27

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to stay within the lane by considering the threshold between car and the lane boundary.

The calculation for RMT is according to the following equation [2].

Where, x(k) is the lateral offset distance from the centerline of the road at time k Îł is the threshold value varying from 0% to 50% n is the number of data used

Results and Discussions RMT RMT results of three driving route scenario test conditions which are car following, lane tracking and curve lane tracking are illustrated in Figure 9 to 11. The graph in all scenarios have nearly the same trend which is the gradual decreasing of the RMT while the threshold is increased. It is reasonable since the higher threshold will make driving in the lane easier for the subjects. By comparing among three graphs, the RMT of the curve lane tracking is the highest following by the straight lane tracking and the car following.

From this trend, it can be implied that for the curve lane tracking, it is harder to keep the car within the specific lane along the road due to the curve provided which it makes the subjects harder to control the car. For the straight lane tracking, since there is no leading car along the road, it is harder for the subjects to stay stable along the road as there is no reference car comparing to the car following condition. When comparing between the partial-sleep deprivation and the non-sleep deprivation, it can be noticed that RMT of partial-sleep deprivation is mostly higher than non-sleep deprivation.

Steering Handling Pattern Steering handling pattern results are shown in Figure 12 to 15. From these results, it was discovered that Lane Tracking condition (Figure 12 and 15) shown the most significant relation. In Figure 13 and 14, there is a high amplitude of steering angle since the driver follows the curve during lane tracking.

The results reveal that the partial-sleep deprived steering angle was obviously more fluctuated than the nonsleep deprived steering angle. From this, it can be implied that the performance of the partial sleep-deprived group was worse than the one with non-sleep deprived group as they have less ability to control the steering wheel to be able to stay stable along the straight road.

Those steering patterns data were analyzed and shown in table 1 with reaction time results of all conditions. We found that for the car following and the curve road tracking, the difference between performance of the 28 | September 2019

MEAA | Feature

Partial-sleep deprived group and non-sleep deprived group is not large compare to the case of straight lane tracking condition. As the percentage of the range of frequency from the average frequency is not that high with the average of 28.50% for Partial-sleep deprivation and 28.49% for Non-sleep deprivation. Therefore, we can imply that the frequency of turning the steering angle is efficient enough to use to classify for Partial-sleep and Non-sleep deprivation especially in straight lane tracking condition. Moreover, there are significantly difference between the reaction time of these two groups with the maximum difference in the straight lane tracking condition cutting after the curve road with up to 57.65% difference of the Partial-sleep deprivation from Non-sleep deprivation.

Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) method is used to analyze data of straight lane tracking shown in Figure 15. Power spectrum of steering pattern was plotted and shown in Figure 16. It reveals that the partialsleep deprivation has an overall frequency power spectrum higher than the non-sleep deprivation. Moreover, the partial-sleep deprivation has a wider range of frequency than the non-sleep deprivation. We can imply that the partial-sleep deprived group has lower ability to control the car to be able to stay in the lane compared to the non-sleep deprived group and the FFT method is efficient enough to show the significant distinguish between these two groups.

Discussion To compare between two methods, RMT and steering pattern, RMT can distinguish the drowsy people from normal people better than steering pattern. For all experiment conditions, partial-sleep deprivation show a significant sign that the RMT, which is the root mean square error with offset from the threshold of the lane, is greater than those of non-sleep deprivation. This can interpret that drowsy people tend www.saea.com.au

to not be able to stay still in the lane. On the other hand, the graph of steering angle versus distance shows that most of the partial-sleep deprivation perform with more fluctuation of steering angle than nonsleep deprivation. However, some non-sleep deprivation results are similar to drowsy results. It may be caused by the behavior of each VTE | 29

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subjects. Since the graph is too fluctuate, we take another step by looking only at the straight lane tracking condition which seem to have the most accurate result because route is straight and there are not distracting objective along the way. The last 2,000 meters of the driving route is the most efficient out of three conditions since it is a straight road with a barrier on both sides of the road which can increase the drowsiness of subjects. Furthermore, the result from steering pattern can be applied to the real automotive. When the processor is used connecting with the steering wheel to detect any abnormal pattern.

The point that separate the normal and abnormal subjects could be the average number of steering handling frequency from the partial-sleep deprivation group, but more subject need to be tested to find more accurate average value and observe the standard deviation. The cause of abnormal steering pattern may cause by drowsiness or distraction.

In order to be certain that the driver is drowsy, eyelid tracking is essential. When drivers are distracted or concentrate on cell phone, their eyes will not close which is easy to be detected. The difference between drowsiness and distraction can then be differentiate. Also, the brain signal or EEG can be used further to assure that the driver is already in the drowsy state.

Conclusions By observing and studying the relation of drowsiness and driving character, it is confirmed that they are related and driving characteristic can reveal a primary recognition of drowsy driver through the analysis of RMT and steering pattern. The result from both methods shows that drowsy people perform worse than non-drowsy people since all of the average line of RMT are above the non-drowsy people. Among the three condition, car following, straight lane tracking and curve lane tracking, straight lane tracking has the most significant result. Therefore, the analysis relies heavily on lane tracking result. RMT method are capable to show distinctive results and overview of drowsiness. As from the analysis, drowsy people have a larger offset from the threshold than regular people; hence drowsy drivers tend to have a bad performance on road. On the other hand, steering handling data shows a very interesting and unique results. The average steering handling frequency of the partial-sleep deprivation is 9.174 Hz and for the non-sleep deprivation is 5.137 Hz. This suggest that the frequency of drowsy driver is almost twice as normal diver. In term of performance, the more the frequency of steering is shown, the worse driving efficiency will be. Although the results suggest that partial sleep deprivation group drive worse respect to the given task than non-sleep deprivation, it 30 | September 2019

cannot precisely determine that those people are really drowsy or what level of drowsiness are those people experienced with. The experiment needs to be proceeded in a bigger scale in order to get a better utterly evident. One big factor is the number of subjects and the age range should be thorough. From the results obtained from the data gathering through various scenarios and conditions, results are quite promising with further research. To study in dept of the relation between drowsiness and driving performance, the standard measurement of the drowsiness needs to be established. It is very crucial to be able to define that the driver is in drowsy state or not. One of the methods that can be used is studying the brainwave signal while driving.

References 1. National Center for Statistics and Analysis, Drowsy Driving 2015, Crash • Stats Brief Statistical Summary, Report No. DOT HS 812 446, Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, October 2017.

2. Yang, J.H. et al., “Detection of Driver Fatigue Caused by Sleep Deprivation,” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans 39(4):694- 705, 2009.

3. National Sleep Foundation, “Facts and Stats of Drowsy Driving,” 2017, [Online] Available from: http:// drowsydriving.org/about/facts-and-stats/, accessed November 9, 2017.

4. Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, “External Factors that Influence Sleep,” 2007, [Online] Available from: http://healthysleep. med.harvard.edu/healthy/ science/how/external-factors, accessed April 20, 2018.

5. AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Acute Sleep Deprivation and Risk of Motor Vehicle Crash Involvement (Washington, DC: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety).

Contact Information Smart Mobility Research Center, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok,10330, Thailand (smartmobility.cu@gmail.com)

Acknowledgments This research has been supported by Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University and Chulalongkorn University Academic Development Project: Strengthen CU. into second century.