Continental and Aurora Innovation made the groundbreaking announcement of their exclusive partnership. The new collaboration will bring to market the first commercially viable generation of Aurora Driver – an integrated hardware-software system developed by Aurora.
The two organizations are combining their expertise in automotive systems development to create a scalable autonomous system, introducing new possibilities for safer, more reliable transportation. At its core is an innovative fallback system that is designed to ensure a driverless truck can continue driving until it reaches a safe position, even when faced with a failure of the primary autonomy system.
Continental will supply the necessary hardware components and pods for Aurora’s self-driving system, from cutting edge sensors and automated driving control units (ADCU) to high performance computers (HPC), telematics units, fallback systems covering all eventualities, as well as manage the full lifecycle of these kits throughout their use by customers.
Production is expected to begin in 2027 after next year’s anticipated launch of Aurora Horizon, the company’s subscription trucking service underpinned by the Aurora driver.
“In this exclusive partnership, we bundle our systems competence with Aurora’s industry-leading autonomous technology for our common goal to jointly realize the first commercially scalable autonomous trucking systems,” said Continental CEO Nikolai Setzer, “a crucial step towards autonomous mobility.”
By taking advantage of each company’s skills and assets, the two have agreed on a hardware-as-a service model based on mileage driven, they will be able to offer customers safe autonomous driving systems through the innovative Aurora Horizon platform. This joint venture promises carriers and fleet operators increased efficiency thanks to better use of vehicles in addition to greater scalability options.
This new system built by the two companies is scalable and compatible with all of Aurora’s manufacturing partners, allowing parts to be created in both their newly built Texas facility as well other locations.
Source: CCJDigital
