Aurora Autonomous Trucks Resume Human Supervision

The U.S. company Aurora Innovation announced that the autonomous freight transportation service it recently launched a few weeks ago will once again have personnel supervising operations from the driver's seat. This is at the request of its partner, heavy vehicle manufacturer PACCAR.

According to Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of the company, PACCAR's demand is due to the fact that some of the parts used in the vehicle's base platform are still considered prototypes.

Urmson emphasized that the measure is unnecessary as indicated by the results of the “exhaustive process (covering nearly 10,000 requirements and 2.7 million tests) and analyses that support our safety case.”

However, “PACCAR has been our partner for a long time, and after much consideration, we have decided to honor the request,” said the executive in an update on the company's blog.

The executive specified that the supervisor will not operate the vehicle and that the Aurora Driver system will continue to be “fully responsible for all driving tasks, including stopping at a safe location if necessary.”

“We have demonstrated that we can operate safely with the more than 6,000 driverless miles that the Aurora Driver has accumulated since the launch of the commercial route between Dallas and Houston,” Urmson reiterated.

The announcement also comes just days after another company co-founder, Sterling Anderson, announced he would be leaving Aurora Innovation to take over as executive vice president of global products and chief product officer at General Motors.

Anderson, who was serving as chief product officer at Aurora, previously worked at Tesla, where he led the design and development of the Model X SUV and the Autopilot driver assistance system.

Anderson will report to company president Mark Reuss and will oversee the end-to-end product lifecycle for both gasoline and electric vehicles, including hardware, software, services and user experiences.