The first-ever production-ready autonomous truck from Volvo has made its debut. The Volvo VNL Autonomous combines Volvo's commercial vehicle expertise with industry-leading autonomous driving technology from Aurora Innovation.
The purpose-designed and purpose-built truck will enable increasing freight capacity across the United States.
"We are at the forefront of a new way to transport goods, complementing and enhancing transportation capacity, and thereby enabling trade and societal growth," stated Nils Jaeger, President of Volvo Autonomous Solutions. "This truck is the first of our standardized global autonomous technology platform, which will enable us to introduce additional models in the future, bringing autonomy to all Volvo Group truck brands, and to other geographies and use cases."
The platform-based design approach will enable Volvo to use its in-house developed virtual driver for trucks and machines working within confined applications and partner virtual driving technologies for on-highway trucking applications.
The Volvo VNL Autonomous has been designed with safety in mind; it has redundant steering, braking, communication, computation, power management, energy storage, and vehicle motion management systems.
"Our platform engineering approach prioritizes safety by incorporating high-assurance redundancy systems designed to mitigate potential emergency situations," said Shahrukh Kazmi, Chief Product Officer at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. "We built the Volvo VNL Autonomous from the ground up, integrating these redundancy systems to ensure that every safety-critical component is intentionally duplicated, thereby significantly enhancing both safety and reliability."
Aurora autonomous driving system combines software and detection features
Engineering teams from Volvo and Aurora have integrated the VNL Autonomous and the Aurora Driver, an SAE L4 autonomous driving system. The Aurora Driver combines powerful AI software, dual computers, proprietary LIDAR that can detect objects more than 400 metres away, high-resolution cameras, imaging radar, and additional sensors, enabling the Volvo VNL Autonomous to safely navigate the world around it.
"Powered by the Aurora Driver, the new Volvo VNL Autonomous is the realization of our shared vision," said Sterling Anderson, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Aurora. "This truck combines Aurora's industry-leading self-driving technology with Volvo's best-in-class truck, designed specifically for autonomy, making it a must-have for any transport provider that wants to strengthen and grow their business."
Aurora has trained and tested Driver in Aurora's virtual suite, where it has driven billions of miles. It also has driven 1.5 million commercial miles on public roads, where it navigates end-to-end trucking routes traversing highways, rural roadways, and surface streets day and night, and through good and bad weather.
"The Volvo VNL Autonomous, powered by the Aurora Driver, offers a fully integrated autonomous solution in the Hub-to-Hub segment," says Sasko Cuklev, Head of On-Road Solutions at Volvo Autonomous Solutions, "Our approach reduces complexity for our customers while allowing them to experience the benefits of an autonomous solution with peace of mind by ensuring efficiency, safety and reliability."
