Autonomous truck maker Aurora announced several milestones, including surpassing 20,000 driverless miles (32,000 km), expanding its fleet to three trucks, and commencing driverless operation at night.
It also opened a new Phoenix, Ariz., terminal and is now publicly broadcasting its driverless trucks in action.
“Efficiency, uptime, and reliability are important for our customers, and Aurora is showing we can deliver,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora, in a news release. “Just three months after launch, we’re running driverless operations day and night and we’ve expanded our terminal network to Phoenix. Our rapid progress is beginning to unlock the full value of self-driving trucks for our customers, which has the potential to transform the trillion-dollar trucking industry.”
Nighttime operations are running – sans driver – between Dallas and Houston, Texas. This has more than doubled truck utilization potential, Aurora announced, while shortening delivery times on longhaul routes.
The company notes 37% of truck crashes occur at night, and that the Aurora Driver can see the world around it day and night without ever getting tired. The system can detect objects in the dark that are more than 450 meters away.
Meanwhile, the Phoenix terminal showcases an infrastructure-light model that will be rolled out to industry. The Fort Worth-Phoenix lane traditionally takes about 15 hours to complete, but Aurora says autonomous trucks can halve transit times on long routes.
Aurora is making deliveries on this route for Hirschbach and Werner.
The company has also launched a YouTube channel, Aurora Driver Live, which allows the public to view a livestream of its self-driving trucks in action.
