As we prepare to launch our first driverless commercial trucks, let’s explore the most common questions about Aurora, our driverless technology, and how it delivers both safety and unmatchable value.
What is the Aurora Driver?
The Aurora Driver for Freight is a continuously improving, intelligent autonomous truck driving system made up of software built with our Verifiable AI approach, cutting-edge hardware, and data services. It allows trucks to run 24 hours a day with superhuman perception and planning—completely driverless.
How does the Aurora Driver compare to the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) technology in vehicles today?
The Aurora Driver is being designed as a Society of Automotive Engineers’ (SAE’s) Level 4 Automated Driving System (ADS), which is an automation system capable of driving in specific areas under defined conditions. As an example, an Aurora Driver-powered truck operating on a specific route to a specific customer site under certain weather conditions.
ADAS features, like we see in many vehicles today—such as adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking—are fundamentally different. ADAS systems, which would fall under SAE’s Level 2 standard, rely on the presence of a human driver to actively monitor the operation of the vehicle and take over any time the system encounters something it can’t handle or something else goes wrong.
Level 4 ADS are designed to operate without relying on any human intervention. The Aurora Driver is an ADS system—a fully autonomous self-driving system that doesn’t require a human fallback.
What sensors are used in the Aurora Driver? Does it leverage AI?
Aurora Driver-powered trucks are equipped with a multi-modal sensor suite of more than two dozen lidar, radar, and cameras that work together to give the Aurora Driver a superhuman 360 degree view of the world. FirstLight, our proprietary long range lidar technology can detect objects more than 450 meters away—almost five football fields—unlocking highway driving capabilities for autonomous trucks.
Powered by our Verifiable AI, the Aurora Driver is able to operate safely and predictably by embedding the finite rules of the road—like stopping at stop signs, driving on the correct side of the road, and going on green. This approach aligns AI behavior with human expectations to deliver human-like, trustworthy driving. Behind our safe driving behavior and lightning-fast reaction time is a powerful computer with redundant backup systems in place and the ability to monitor itself for issues.
Is Aurora making its technology in-house?
Aurora designs and develops its core self-driving technology in-house, including its Verifiable AI approach and FirstLight Lidar. More standardized components, such as certain sensors and hardware, are sourced from external suppliers to leverage industry advancements and cost efficiencies. To bring its autonomous technology to market at scale, Aurora collaborates with an ecosystem of partners to manufacture and integrate its driverless kits onto autonomy-enabled truck platforms from both Volvo Trucks and PACCAR.
How and when will you know you’re ready to launch driverless operations?
We plan to launch our first driverless trucks hauling customer loads between Dallas and Houston in April. To begin driverless operations, we must show that our product is acceptably safe for public roads. This process is governed by closure of our safety case—the thorough examination of our technology that helps ensure it drives proficiently, can fail safely, and operates with resilience. Further, our safety case helps prioritize continuous improvement and trustworthiness in our organization.
Once our safety case is closed, we initiate a release process that includes final critical analysis of product safety by our leadership. Once this group is satisfied that all appropriate steps have been taken to prioritize the safety of the Aurora Driver and performance criteria, a final decision will be made to launch driverless operations.
Where will I see Aurora's self-driving trucks?
Today, we are hauling goods across Texas for customers between Dallas and Houston (our launch route), as well as Fort Worth and El Paso—and we’ll soon start commercial pilots on a new Fort Worth-Phoenix route. Every delivery is made under the supervision of a vehicle operator, but our technology is doing most of the work, driving thousands of commercial miles every day.
Texas is central, providing an opportunity to efficiently expand our lanes. Given Texas’s central geographic location, truck drivers can reach almost any other part of the U.S. within 48 hours from the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
If the Aurora Driver sees something unusual on the road, is there a human operator that will take over by remote control?
No, but a human is in the loop. Aurora operates using a command center, similar to how carriers operate today with dispatch centers. Our infrastructure of tools and services enable a central command center to oversee our fleet and provide supervisory guidance.
If there’s something the Aurora Driver is unfamiliar with, it can ask for support, and our command center can provide suggestions and, if necessary, roadside assistance. However, for safety and security the Aurora Driver always retains full control over the vehicle.
What happens when something goes wrong with the Aurora Driver, such as a sensor suddenly not working or the computer crashing?
Building a robust, reliable autonomous trucking product requires planning not only for when everything works as expected, but for when unexpected failures occur. This is a core principle of our safety case—that the Aurora Driver can fail safely.
Aurora’s autonomous vehicles include built-in redundancies that provide backups in the rare case a component or sensor fails. One of these redundancies is the fallback system—a specialized secondary computer that can take over operation if a failure occurs in the primary system. This innovative dual engineering approach is intended to reduce the exposure of the main and fallback system to single points of failure.
We’ve also developed a Fault Management System (FMS) that continuously monitors the health of the autonomous truck, detects when something goes wrong, and safely responds to these situations. When failures occur, the FMS directs the vehicle to perform a minimal-risk maneuver, such as pulling over to the side of the road outside the flow of traffic.
Who are Aurora’s customers and how will this technology be deployed?
The Aurora Driver is designed to seamlessly integrate into customers’ fleets and operations. We autonomously haul freight for pilot customers, including FedEx, Werner, Schneider, Hirschbach, Uber Freight, and others—and are laying the groundwork for them to operate Aurora-powered trucks between their facilities directly.
Today, our trucks are hauling goods across Texas for customers between Dallas and Houston. Our trucks operate between market consolidation points we call terminals. These allow us to quickly and efficiently bring online new lanes with controlled operations at either end.
We plan to launch our first driverless trucks along our Dallas and Houston lane in April. After a successful initial deployment, we expect to incrementally and gradually scale by deploying more trucks, expanding our product capabilities (for example, night driving and rainy conditions) and opening more lanes along the U.S. Interstate system. With this, we also expect to begin to bring online large customer locations that naturally serve as consolidation points for their business.
Over the coming months, we’re going to deliver a product that can transform the transportation ecosystem and make our roads safer. And we can’t wait to share more exciting updates!
