Aurora Truck From Up Close

Aurora is one of the more advanced companies developing self-driving trucks and carrying out test drives in the US state of Texas. In the past, the Mountain View-based startup, founded by ex-Tesla, ex-Uber and ex-Waymo people, had also developed robotaxis, but discontinued these in favor of robot truck development. Both a robotaxi and a current robo-truck were on display at an event. Here are a few impressions and details.

The second vehicle was a Class 8 truck with sensor superstructures, which gave an insight into the arrangement of the sensors and some details, including the computer in the driver’s cab, which is located in the driver’s sleeping cabin.

There are some interesting details to note in the sensor setups. On the one hand, there are the two white LED strips under the “wings”, which are fitted above the side doors. In the event of a stop in the emergency lane, these serve to replace the breakdown triangle that is actually prescribed. However, an autonomous truck does not have a driver who can set one up. That is why Aurora, Waymo and others have brought forward a petition to use these very bright lights as a replacement.

Below the Hesai LIDARs and next to the rectangular LIDARs developed by Aurora can be seen arrangements of three nozzles each. These are used for cleaning and spray alcohol-soaked cleaning fluids on the one hand and then blow air over them to get rid of the droplets. On the round Hesai LIDARs, three of these nozzle arrangements are mounted around a LIDAR at 90 degrees to each other.