Aurora, which launched a commercial self-driving truck service this spring, recently released a statement validating the autonomous vehicles’ ability to navigate roads and highways at night.
Navigating at Night
The ability to travel expertly in both night and daytime conditions allows trucks to operate for longer distances, past the federally mandated service limit for human drivers. Human drivers are only allowed to drive up to 11 hours over a 14-hour period. They can’t do this consecutively, and they must take 10-hour breaks after a long-haul route.
“The value is really on longer lengths — so 600 miles is certainly a good range, where that is on the border of what’s possible for people,” Aurora Innovation CEO Chris Urmson told TechCrunch in a recent interview.
According to Urmson, Aurora’s ability to operate at night is partially due to its long-range lidar, which is capable of detecting objects in the dark more than 450 meters (approximately 1,500 feet). The lidar can identify vehicles, pedestrians, and debris up to 11 seconds sooner than a human driver.
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The next challenge for Urmson and Aurora’s engineers is to validate the self-driving trucks’ ability to operate in rainy conditions.
“By the end of the year, we expect to be operating day, night, and in rain — if you can’t drive through the rain, ultimately, it’s hard to support these long operations because it’s raining somewhere,” he said.
Though Aurora’s development fleet currently operates well in the rain, validation of this ability for its commercial trucks has yet to be completed. Until this occurs, the trucks monitor weather on their commercial route between Dallas and Houston and automatically pull themselves off the road if adverse conditions arise.
The firm plans to have “tens of driverless trucks” operating by the end of this year and “hundreds” by the end of 2026.
“This year is really about building the capability toolbox so that the vehicles can drive where they need to,” he said in a nod to the company’s focus on validating driving at night and in the rain.
