Tier 1 automotive supplier Continental and Aurora Innovation announced that the companies have finalized the design for a scalable autonomous trucking system. The announcement was made at CES 2024 in Las Vegas. The companies confirmed that after a year of collaboration they have completed the design and architecture of the system as well as hardware of the Aurora Driver.

“Technologies for autonomous mobility present the biggest opportunity to transform driving behavior since the creation of the automobile,” said Philipp von Hirschheydt, executive board member for the automotive sector at Continental. “Achieving this milestone puts us on a credible path to deploy easy-to-service autonomous trucking systems that customers demand.”

Continental confirmed that the system will adhere to SAE Level 4 automated-driving parameters. Continental added that it plans to start mass production of the system by 2027 and will directly ship the Aurora Driver hardware to Aurora’s truck-manufacturing partners. Aurora is planning its initial driverless-truck launch for the end of 2024.

Redundancy realized
Aurora and Continental confirmed that their design will feature a fallback system that is intended to operate the vehicle without a human driver. According to their announcement, the fallback system incorporates a specialized secondary computer that can take over operation if a failure occurs in the primary system. This approach is intended to reduce the exposure of the main and fallback system to single points of failure.

“From day one, we knew we’d need to build a strong ecosystem of partners to bring this technology to market safely and at a commercial scale,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO at Aurora. “Finalizing the design of our future hardware is a meaningful step toward making the unit economics of the Aurora Driver compelling and building a business for the long-term.”

Keeping time
Continental and Aurora included a detailed timeline for this system’s development cycle as part of their announcement. From 2024-2025, the companies plan to build and test the system architecture. Continental will build initial versions of the hardware for testing at its facility in New Braunfels, Texas.

From 2026-2027, the firms plan to finalize the design and begin serial production and integration. Continental will validate the Aurora Driver hardware and fallback system before the start of production at its facilities. The hardware will utilize Continental sensors, automated-driving control units, telematics units and other components.

The hardware and fallback system will be shipped to Aurora’s trucking manufacturing partners for integration into autonomous-ready vehicles. During this phase, the companies will also develop a service playbook and maintenance network for Aurora’s customers.

From 2027 and beyond, the firms hope to have the Aurora Driver ready to autonomously haul freight across the U.S. “Entering an exclusive partnership with Aurora was a very good decision as it is an ideal match,” von Hirschheydt said. “Being the industry’s only tier-one supplier with a commitment to industrialize autonomous hardware kits at scale allows us to be at the forefront of and capitalize on this groundbreaking technology.”