SAE Update - July 2024 - 9

The ongoing evolution of
autonomous highway trucks
TECH FOCUS: COMMERCIAL
AND OFF-ROAD VEHICLES
autonomous machines have to deal with few or no
edge cases.
Highway truck ODD: Autonomy's middle ground
Between the two extremes-robotaxis navigating
complex, dynamic, urban streets and off-road
autonomous machines toiling in relative peace-lies
the ODD of highway trucks. This ODD is generally
devoid of cross-traffic but still has to navigate a
multilane road environment shared with other fastmoving
vehicles, with the added unpredictability of
bad weather or poor visibility.
In contrast to the cautious reassessment of urban
robotaxis post-October 2023, autonomous truck
development has maintained its momentum-despite
the closure or liquidation of several startups, such as
TuSimple, Embark, Starsky Robotics, Otto, and others.
The shakedown has actually brought some clarity,
as it winnowed down the field of autonomous
trucking to a handful of major players; namely, Aurora
Innovation, Kodiak, and Torc Robotics. (Interestingly,
Caterpillar's autonomous loaders have used a Torc
Robotics-developed software stack for years; now,
Torc is refining that same software for use in the
more-complex highway ODD.) In addition, there are
new or niche players such as Waabi, Plus.ai, Stack AV,
and Einride.
Truck autonomy is unique since it focuses on
cargo instead of human transportation. The
fundamental value proposition is that the
autonomous truck will help free the logistics
industry from physical limitations of human labor,
fatigue, and distraction, addressing the impending
driver shortage as well as eliminating the key
operational cost of driver overhead, while
improving logistic efficiency. However, the
technology itself first has to exceed the bar of
UPDATE
human driving under nondeterministic
edge cases, while
consistently being safe for all
road users.
The sun belt's three
key players
Autonomous truck pilots, from
the three leading players-
Aurora, Kodiak, and Torc-are
now testing hub-to-hub delivery
use cases, primarily in so-called
sun belt states such as Texas,
Arizona, and New Mexico.
Aurora Innovation, led by CEO
Chris Urmson, has been
developing its in-house
autonomous trucking platform,
the Aurora Driver. I have listened
to Urmson's view on autonomy
at several industry events and
had a chance opportunity for a
short hallway conversation at
CES a few years back. He is
certainly one of the best minds
in autonomous technology, with
deep experience going back to
the DARPA autonomous
challenge and later as the project
leader at the Waymo self-driving
project. The company said in
2023 that the Aurora Driver is
now " feature complete " as it
plans its initial commercial
launch at the end of this year,
with Volvo trucks as its key
partner. At the recent ACT Expo
July 2024
9

https://www.britannica.com/place/Sun-Belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Urmson https://spectrum.ieee.org/cmu-solves-12-year-old-darpa-grand-challenge-mystery https://spectrum.ieee.org/cmu-solves-12-year-old-darpa-grand-challenge-mystery

SAE Update - July 2024

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