For almost a decade, Pittsburgh based Aurora Innovation invested heavily in Lidar development and finally, things are starting to come together & yielding results.
Trucking, especially general freight - is an industry that has been facing serious challenges in recent years from high driver turn over rate, unstable loadboards influenced by brokers, shady companies regularly changing DOT numbers, illegal drivers, driver fatigue, rising insurance costs & the list goes on. Despite being a federally regulated industry, there is no national standard for trucking schools & its getting harder to find good drivers as the lifestyle & health stakes are high for this trade.
About a decade ago, some geniuses in silicon valley came up with a joking idea of an 80 000 lbs bullet that doesn't pull over for a pit stop, doesn't sleep, doesn't need a mandatory 30 min break...basically - doesn't need a CDL.
With the help of NVIDIA powering their main computer this joke is now a proprietary AV software & hardware stack worth billions of dollars of investment called FirstLight lidar, and its hauling freight. At least that's how Aurora CEO Chris Urmson felt when he sat a the back of the first driverless class 8 truck doing a run between Dallas & Houston at the end of April (delivering pastries).
Aurora has been collaborating with Uber Freight & Hirschbach to deploy their hardware kit and this time, it wasn't just a test - but an actual commercial delivery. It took years of arduous work to develop a reliable sensor fusion system capable of seing beyond several football fields (it's like the truck has a sixth sense), navigating through state & FMCSA laws (e.g. the warning device exemption), while maintaining transparency for the general public.
The achievement is worth noticing, but there is still a lot of work ahead. Scaling an AV system is no small feat, not to mention gaining public trust with issues such as adverse weather, unpredictable drivers, & breakdowns - like tire blowouts. Let's also not forget cybersecurity - staying on top in mitigating risks like hacking a vehicle remotely, influencing gps routing, injecting malicious data, cloud breaches...the stakes are high & the safety team already displayed how serious they are by doing strict periodic audits.
The facts are that Aurora built something that most people thought would be impossible just a few years ago. Will this take over the jobs of truckers tomorrow? I doubt it, but one thing for sure is that AV Semis are no longer a fad but reality...and its an example of what AI research & strong leadership combined together can yield.
Keep on truckin'.