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A new self - drive motortruck — manufacture by Volvo and load with autonomous vehicle technical school developed by Aurora Innovation — could be on public highways as early as this summer .
The Volvo VNL Autonomous hand truck , which was revealed Monday evening at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas , is the product of a partnership between Aurora and Volvo Autonomous Solutions . Aurora plan to startle hauling freight using these Volvo ego - labour trucks in the next several months . The trucks will be in autonomous fashion and will still have a human safety wheeler dealer behind the cycle to take control if postulate .
Later this yr , the ship’s company be after to annunciate fender programme with customers that will use the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck , allot to an Aurora spokesperson . Volvo has already started to manufacture an initial test fleet of these ego - driving hand truck at its New River Valley assemblage facility in Virginia .
The reveal of the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck comes as Aurora continues to push toward its stated goal to commercialize ego - drive trucks by the end of 2024 . The company initially plans to carry cargo between Dallas and Houston using up to 20 driverless Class 8 trucks — this time with no human behind the wheel . Aurora declined to share whether truck made by Volvo , or its other better half Paccar , would be in that inaugural driverless fleet .
Getting to commercialization is existential for Aurora — one of the last self-reliant trucking company standing . Last yr , Waymo Via put the brakeson its ego - drive trucking program , andTuSimple recently left the U.S. marketin favor of expanding in Asia . Aurora has not been immune to the high - working capital cost of developing and then establish commercial autonomous trucks either . In January , the companylaid off 3 % of its workforcein order to cut back costs in advance of its commercial-grade launch .
Consolidation in the AV industry has think of few challenger for Aurora . Einride , Torc and Kodiak Robotics , which revealed its ownpurpose - build ego - driving magnanimous rig , are among the few that stay .
The Volvo partnership , which the party first inked in March 2021 , is one part of Aurora ’s commercialization strategy . Aurora has launched pilot program with logistics company FedEx , Ryder , Schneider and Uber Freight . In January , Aurora and automotive supplier Continental close up the first phase of a more than$300 million projectto pile produce sovereign vehicle hardware for commercial-grade self - driving trucks . The two companies finalise the design and scheme architecture for an AV hardware kit , as well as the blueprint for a petty computing gadget that can take over operation if a failure occurs . The Continental hardware kit wo n’t be in Aurora trucks until 2027 , but the Volvo VNL will still be packed with safety features , the company enounce .
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The Volvo motortruck features tautological guidance , braking , communicating , computation , power management , energy storage and vehicle motion direction systems , grant to Aurora . The motortruck is also integrated with the Aurora Driver , a self - get system that includes dual computers , self - driving software , in - house lidar that can find objects more than 1,300 feet away , high - resolution cameras and imaging radiolocation .
“ Our political platform engineering approach prioritize safety by incorporating mellow - pledge redundance systems designed to mitigate likely emergency situation , ” said Shahrukh Kazmi , master ware officer at Volvo Autonomous Solutions , in a program line . “ We progress the Volvo VNL Autonomous from the ground up , desegregate these redundance systems to ensure that every safety - critical component is intentionally duplicate , thereby significantly raise both guard and reliability . ”
Once Aurora and Volvo have validated this chopine , the plan is to start fully driverless mathematical process with a “ modest - sized fleet of trucks , ” fit in to the Aurora representative , who declined to provide a specific timeline . The spokesperson articulate that over the next few years , Aurora and Volvo expect to start high - volume yield of the Volvo VNL integrate with the Aurora Driver .
