Story:
While riding the train from Long Branch to New York City, I was annoyed with
all the stops along the way. Some of the time I gained by not driving and being
stuck in traffic, I spent thinking of different ways to make the trip faster
and more efficient. I imagined a wide variety of schemes, including: enclosing
the tracks, building a second
level above the tracks for high-speed vehicles, and so on. My thinking stuck in
the form of the existing trains: an engine pulling a dozen cars. After several
years of interesting, but fruitless, ideas, it suddenly hit me that if I just
made each car an Autonomous Vehicle, there are many new possibilities.
Follow a similar approach to freight trains: connect many vehicles together into a “Convoy” of Autonomous Vehicles. As you saw before, having a long Convoy of vehicles is much more
aerodynamically efficient than separate vehicles.
One of the efficiency challenges of conventional trains is
that the whole train stops at each station. This slows down the everything that isn’t exiting at that station, and is also less efficient because of the mass
of vehicles stopped and then reaccelerated needlessly.
To achieve the advantages of non-stop service, while also
providing many intermediate stops, we have invented, what we believe is a new
approach to fast, efficient transportation.
Innovation: Continuous Convoys
We call these Continuous
Convoys because the Convoy as a whole never stops (except at the end of the A-Way), only individual vehicles stop. As the Convoy approaches a Stop, the last
Vehicle in the Convoy (A) detaches from the Convoy and decelerates to arrive at
the Stop. The other Vehicles in the Convoy (B-D) continue at normal speed.
Simultaneously, as the Convoy approaches the Stop, the Vehicle
waiting at the Stop (E), accelerates to join the front of the Convoy.
The next diagram shows two consecutive Convoys passing
through the Stop. Note that Vehicle A, which was the last Vehicle in the first
Convoy, and stopped at the Stop, joins the front of the second Convoy.
You have probably noticed a challenge with this approach: if
you want to get off at a Stop, you have to be in the last Vehicle in the
Convoy.
Innovation: Continuous Convoys and En Route Sequencing
The solution to this challenge is to have people, and other
loads, within the Convoy Vehicles move to the appropriate Vehicle for their
Stop – we call this Continuous Convoys
and En Route Sequencing.
As the Convoy approaches a Stop, everything destined for
that Stop is in the last Vehicle in the Convoy (Stop 1, Purple in the diagram).
At the appropriate time, the last Vehicle detaches from the Convoy and
decelerates to arrive at the Stop, and the loads exit. The other Vehicles in
the Convoy continue at normal speed.
Simultaneously, as the Convoy approaches the Stop, there may
be a Vehicle waiting at the Stop, carrying loads for various Stops ahead. At
the appropriate time, this Vehicle accelerates to join the front of the Convoy.
Once this Vehicle has connected to the front of the Convoy,
the contents of this Vehicle move to the Vehicle destined to go to their
particular destination (Stop 2, Blue; Stop 3, Green; Stop 4, Orange; Stop 5,
Red) – we call this En Route Sequencing.
Multi-Layer Nesting and En Route Sequencing
We showed smaller Autonomous Vehicles inside other larger
Autonomous Vehicles in the diagram of Nesting. These smaller Vehicles can also
use En Route Sequencing inside the larger Vehicles; then the larger Vehicles use
En Route Sequencing inside the Continuous Convoy Vehicles, so that everything arrives at the proper Stop.
