Volvo And Aurora Announce Their First Self-Driving Truck

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.

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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”.