Volvo teamed up with Aurora to reveal their initial autonomous truck production, a collaboration announced three years prior. The unveiling featured the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck—a creation of autonomous trucking and robotaxi enterprise Aurora, set to be produced by Volvo—presented at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas.
The truck is equipped with the Aurora Driver, a Level 4 autonomous driving system, incorporating advanced sensors such as high-resolution cameras, imaging radars, and a LiDAR sensor capable of detecting objects up to 400 meters away. The technology behind Aurora Driver has undergone extensive testing, including billions of virtual miles and 1.5 million miles on public roads. To ensure safety, the vehicle includes redundant systems for steering, braking, communication, computation, power management, energy storage, and vehicle motion management.
A report by TechCrunch mentioned that, initially, a human driver will still be present in the truck to intervene when necessary as it begins to transport cargo across North America soon. Aurora plans to introduce pilot programs with clients aiming to utilize Volvo’s truck later in the year, following previous trials with FedEx and Uber Freight, although specific companies have not been disclosed.
Aurora also has plans to launch 20 fully driverless trucks for operation between Dallas and Houston, though it remains unspecified whether these will be Volvo trucks or from another manufacturer. Volvo has commenced manufacturing a test fleet of the VNL Autonomous truck at its New River Valley assembly plant in Virginia. Nils Jaeger, President of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, highlighted the vehicle as the inaugural element of the company’s standardized global autonomous technology platform, hinting at the future introduction of additional models.
