Autonomous driving technology company TuSimple has introduced its high-performance central compute unit, the TuSimple Domain Controller (TDC). The TDC will be used as the central computational unit for an autonomous truck, and will incorporate sensor inputs, high-performance computing, an integrated vehicle control unit (VCU) and autonomous software to enable advanced autonomous driving solutions.
Development of the TDC lasted several years and follows the company’s announcement in 2022 that it would utilize Nvidia technology for the development of a proprietary domain controller. At present, the company and certain customers are testing and validating B-sample units, ahead of C-sample units shipping in Q2 of 2023, followed closely by production units in Q4 of 2023.
“We’re proud to launch our TuSimple Domain Controller as it meets a market need for a single-box, central compute platform ideal for advanced commercial mobility,” said Cheng Lu, president and CEO, TuSimple. “Coupled with our industry-leading software capabilities, the TDC provides OEMs, partners and customers with a suite of fully integrated, low-cost, high-performance autonomy solutions.”
TuSimple’s TDC aims to work with different sensor configurations and TuSimple application software to enable several autonomous capabilities, including next-generation L2+ and conditional L3 ADAS solutions for commercial vehicles to improve road safety and fuel utilization. The solution also provides a highly customizable, low-cost hardware and software module fusing together different sensor modalities to offer OEMs a holistic perception stack option. Additionally, the TDC can be used as a primary or redundant computing unit to power full L4 autonomous systems.
The TDC is powered by the Nvidia Drive Orin system-on-a-chip and supports next-generation ADAS projects for commercial vehicles in the Chinese market with the potential for expansion to US and European markets.
“We intend to utilize the TDC for computational redundancy in powering our L4 autonomous driving solution,” said Lei Wang, executive vice president of technology, TuSimple. “We expect the next generation of the TDC will replace the primary computational system to enable OEM production-ready, L4 autonomous vehicles.”