Three years after announcing their partnership, Aurora and Volvo have launched their first autonomous truck in production.
Nils Jaeger, President of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, confirmed the development in a press release on Tuesday.
Aurora bills itself as a leading autonomous driving technology firm founded by former executives from Google, Uber, and Tesla.
Newsng understands that the truck is based on Volvo’s recently released VNL, a Class 8 semi truck designed for long-distance driving.
With the help of a variety of sensors and cameras, Aurora’s Level 4 autonomous driving system—which allows the truck to function without a driver—is powered by the autonomous variant of the vehicle.
The truck is “purpose-designed and purpose-built,” according to the firms, for Aurora’s hardware and software stack for autonomous driving.
“This truck is the first of our standardized global autonomous technology platform, which will enable us to introduce additional models in the future, bringing autonomy to all Volvo Group truck brands, and to other geographies and use cases,” Jaeger explained.
According to Aurora, it intends to roll out 20 completely autonomous vehicles this year, with ambitions to grow to roughly 100 trucks by 2025 and eventually sell them to other businesses.
Commenting on the functionality of the truck, Sterling Anderson, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Aurora said: “This truck combines Aurora’s industry-leading self-driving technology with Volvo’s best-in-class truck, designed specifically for autonomy, making it a must-have for any transport provider that wants to strengthen and grow their business.”
Newsng gathered that the Volvo truck has redundant systems for energy storage, steering, braking, communication, calculation, power management, and vehicle motion management.
The truck is also equipped with the so-called Aurora Driver, an autonomous system that consists of two computers, imaging radar, lidar (an internal device that can identify things more than 1,300 feet away), high-resolution cameras, and self-driving software.
We earlier reported that a U.S. startup ClearMotion’s road-reading software and active suspension technology have been validated by the German luxury carmaker Porsche, and the two businesses have inked a licencing agreement for the technology.
