Although it had previously said testing would begin by the end of 2024, Aurora Innovation, Inc. has announced that road testing of its autonomous trucks between Dallas and Houston, Texas, will be delayed until sometime in 2025.
The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, company said that test drives without humans on board would not begin to haul freight and that it had made progress to ensure its trucks would operate safely, but that testing would be “moderately late.”
According to Chris Urmson, the Chief Executive Officer at Aurora Innovation, the remaining obstacles are “primarily in the areas of some elements of surface street driving and some elements of construction that we see on the freeway.
He added, “We want to have extremely high confidence in the system as we go forward."
Urmson said that it would have 10 autonomous tractor-trailers at the start of testing and move to "tens" of trucks by the end of 2025.
“This shift to our timeline will have a negligible financial impact and does not affect our scaling efforts on our path to self-funding," Urmson said.
Along with the Dallas to Houston run, testing will also be done on a stretch from Fort Worth, Texas, to Phoenix, Arizona, later in 2025.
The core of Aurora Innovation’s autonomous system is being called Aurora Driver, using hardware and software that will adapt to a broad set of vehicle types, from a four-door sedan to a Class 8 truck.
The hardware features a computer and a suite of sensors that allow Aurora Driver to interact with the world around it. The software features state-of-the-art perception, motion planning, mapping, and simulation systems capabilities so that Aurora Driver can see and understand what it sees to drive safely and effectively within its environment.
Sensors on any of Aurora’s autonomous vehicles will utilize lidar (light detection and ranging), cameras, and radar (radio detecting and ranging), which when combined will provide the Aurora Driver with an overlapping 360º view of its environment.
Despite the delay in further testing, Aurora Innovations has already had successful testing of its autonomous driving technology through a combination of real-world and simulated environments.
Aurora has conducted extensive testing on public roads in various locations, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Pittsburgh, and Dallas, whereby autonomous vehicles have driven in real traffic conditions to gather data and refine their technology.
As well, the company has partnered with FedEx, Uber, and Toyota to test and deploy their autonomous driving technology in real-world logistics and ride-hailing scenarios.
For safety, during those previously conducted road tests, a safety driver was on board to take over if necessary. There were also redundant systems to prevent failure.
The current delay in testing would have removed the onboard safety driver as the company seeks to ensure its Aurora Driver technology is capable of handling real-world complex driving scenarios.
Company information may be found at https://aurora.tech.