Aurora Innovation, Inc. this week announced it has successfully launched its commercial self-driving trucking service in Texas, delivering freight between Dallas and Houston.
To date, the company said its Aurora Driver has completed over 1,200 miles without a driver. The milestone makes Aurora the first company to operate a commercial self-driving service with heavy-duty trucks on public roads, according to a statement from the company.
Aurora said it plans to expand its driverless service to El Paso, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona by the end of 2025.
“We founded Aurora to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. Now, we are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads,” said Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora. “Riding in the back seat for our inaugural trip was an honor of a lifetime – the Aurora Driver performed perfectly and it’s a moment I’ll never forget.”
Aurora’s flagship product, the Aurora Driver, is an SAE L4 self-driving system that is first being deployed in long-haul trucking. Its launch customers are Uber Freight, and Hirschbach Motor Lines. Both companies have had long-standing supervised commercial pilots with Aurora, according to the company.
Prior to driverless operations, Aurora closed its safety case, which is how the company assembled evidence to show its product is acceptably safe for public roads. The company also released a Driverless Safety Report which includes details about the Aurora Driver’s operating domain for initial operations along with Aurora’s approach to cybersecurity, remote assistance, and more safety-critical topics.
The company said its Aurora Driver is equipped with a powerful computer and sensors that can see beyond the length of four football fields, enabling it to safely operate on the highway. In over four years of supervised pilot hauls, the Aurora Driver has delivered over 10,000 customer loads across three million autonomous miles.
Aurora said its Verifiable AI approach to autonomy blends powerful learning models with guardrails to help ensure the rules of the road are followed, like yielding for emergency vehicles. Verifiable AI also played a critical role in enabling Aurora to close its driverless safety case, as it enables the company to examine and validate the Aurora Driver’s decision making.
Aurora’s launch trucks are equipped with the Aurora Driver hardware kit and numerous redundant systems including braking, steering, power, sensing, controls, computing, cooling, and communication, enabling them to safely operate without a human driver.
