Volvo Autonomous Solutions has unveiled Volvo’s first-ever production-ready autonomous truck at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Volvo VNL Autonomous features Aurora Driver, an SAE L4 autonomous driving system from Aurora Innovation. Aurora Driver consists of powerful Al software, dual computers, proprietary lidar that can detect objects more than 400m away, high-resolution cameras, imaging radar and additional sensors, enabling the Volvo VNL Autonomous to safely navigate the world around it.
The Aurora Driver has been extensively trained and tested in Aurora’s sophisticated virtual suite where it’s driven billions of miles. It also has driven 1.5 million commercial miles on public roads, on end-to-end trucking routes traversing highways, rural roadways and surface streets, day and night, and through good and bad weather.
To further ensure safety, the Volvo VNL Autonomous features redundant steering, braking, communication, computation, power management, energy storage and vehicle motion management systems.
“Our platform engineering approach prioritizes safety by incorporating high-assurance redundancy systems designed to mitigate potential emergency situations,” said Shahrukh Kazmi, chief product officer at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “We built the Volvo VNL Autonomous from the ground up, integrating these redundancy systems to ensure that every safety-critical component is intentionally duplicated, thereby significantly enhancing both safety and reliability.”
“We are at the forefront of a new way to transport goods, complementing and enhancing transportation capacity, and thereby enabling trade and societal growth,” added Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, at the launch. “This truck is the first of our standardized global autonomous technology platform, which will enable us to introduce additional models in the future, bringing autonomy to all Volvo Group truck brands, and to other geographies and use cases.”
The Volvo VNL Autonomous will be assembled at Volvo’s flagship New River Valley (NRV) plant in Dublin, Virginia. As the largest Volvo Trucks plant in the world, NRV’s decades of high-volume production experience combined with stringent automotive quality processes will result in the capability to produce the Volvo VNL Autonomous at industry demand.
“The Volvo VNL Autonomous, powered by the Aurora Driver, offers a fully integrated autonomous solution in the hub-to-hub segment,” said Sasko Cuklev, head of on-road solutions at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “Our approach reduces complexity for our customers while allowing them to experience the benefits of an autonomous solution with peace of mind by ensuring efficiency, safety and reliability.”