Automotive supplier Continental and autonomous driving technology developer Aurora have successfully completed a key design milestone toward developing fully self-driving commercial trucks, company officials said.
The companies last year signed a first-of-its-kind partnership that aimed to develop “high-volume” manufacturing of autonomous trucking technology. The first phase of their collaboration — the design and architecture of the technology’s “fallback system” — has been completed.
Company officials said the announcement puts them on a “credible path” toward deploying thousands of autonomous trucks in coming years.
A fallback system, one of several redundancies built into autonomous systems to ensure a single component failure does not compromise vehicle safety, would be able to take over operating an autonomous vehicle in the event of a problem with the primary system.
Aurora, a Pittsburgh startup founded by former Tesla, Uber, and Waymo officials in 2017, is working on its Aurora Driver, which is classified as a Level 4 autonomous driving system by the Society of Automotive Engineers — just below “full driving automation.”
Continental and Aurora also announced a four-year “roadmap” toward commercializing the system. Following the successful completion of the blueprint and design phase, Continental will test the first versions of the hardware across its global operations over the next few years. In 2026 and 2027, the company will “industrialize and validate” Aurora Driver’s hardware and fallback system before Continental begins production, which is scheduled for 2027.
The companies said the self-driving system will be designed to provide value to customers for one million miles.
Image Credit: Continental/Aurora
