News

Volvo And Aurora Announce Their First Self-Driving Truck

The new autonomous goods vehicle was revealed at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas.

Published

2 years ago

May 21, 2024

Nour Nasir

volvo and aurora announce their first self-driving truck

Volvo / Aurora

Vehicle maker Volvo and self-driving specialist Aurora have revealed their first production truck with full autonomous capabilities, after first announcing a partnership three years ago. The companies showed off the product of their collaboration, known as the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck, at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas.

The truck, which will be manufactured by Volvo, uses Aurora’s self-driving platform, known as Aurora Driver. The system uses multiple high-resolution cameras, LiDAR sensors and imaging radars, and can detect objects up to 400 meters away.

Aurora’s platform has already been driven billions of miles in training simulations, and around 1.5 million miles on real public highways. As well as a wide range of imaging and sensing technologies, the truck will also feature redundant steering, braking, communication, computation, power management, energy storage and vehicle motion management systems, ensuring it can operate safely alongside other road users.

Also Read: NETGEAR’s Orbi 970 Routers Offer Powerful Wi-Fi 7 Connectivity

When the first 20 Aurora autonomous trucks make their debut in North America next month, they will still be overseen by human drivers until testing is complete. Aurora intends to deploy trucks between Dallas and Houston in the near future, but it’s unclear whether the fleet will consist of Volvo machinery or vehicles from another partner.

Volvo announced at the Las Vegas event that it has already begun manufacturing a test fleet of the VNL Autonomous trucks at its New River Valley factory in Virginia. Nils Jaeger, President of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, explained that the truck was the “first of [the company’s] standardized global autonomous technology platform,” and added that it would enable Volvo “to introduce additional models in the future”.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

6 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

Also Read: DJI Teases Dual-Camera Osmo Pocket 4P For 2026 Launch

Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.