"Autonomous driving will have a major impact on the future of transportation,” says Matthias Korte, Ph.D., project manager at Leoni. “This is why we decided to become a partner in the ATLASL4 project.

“The energy supply of the wiring harness and automation system was the main task,” explains Korte. “We were faced with two crucial questions: what requirements are placed on the electrical power supply in autonomous trucks and what are the implications for the E/E architecture.”

To address these questions, Leoni engineers developed an electrical wiring harness, as well as power distributors and redundant cable sets.

“In accordance with the specified architecture, the redundant cable set is based on two independent subharnesses and supplies the safety-relevant functions with energy,” says Korte.” Both subharnesses are capable of autonomous automated driving thanks to the smart distribution of safety-relevant functions and independent energy sources.

“The central component of the subharness is the intelligent power distributor, which uses electronic fuses to guarantee voltage stability when supplying the relevant devices, even in the event of serious faults in the system, such as short circuits or battery loss,” notes Korte.

“The result is the confirmed power supply wiring system concept for automated driving, which ensures that there is no feedback between the various channels and the wiring system,” Korte points out. “The use of intelligent power distributors ensures independence between the subharnesses.”