Less than a month after Aurora Innovation celebrated its first “driverless” run, the company has announced that it is placing a human back in the driver’s seat.
Citing a request from Paccar, Aurora said its autonomous operations will continue on Interstate 45 in Texas with a person in the front seat. In recent weeks, the company had been operating two driverless trucks between Houston and Dallas with either a person in the back seat or no one on board.
“(Paccar) requested we have a person in the driver’s seat because of certain prototype parts in their base vehicle platform,” Aurora CEO Chris Urmson wrote in a blog post published on Friday, May 16. “We are confident this is not required to operate the truck safely based on the exhaustive testing and analysis that populates our safety case. Paccar is a longtime partner and, after much consideration, we respected their request and are moving the observer, who had been riding in the back of some of our trips, from the back seat to the front seat.”
Aurora’s first driverless run
On May 1, Aurora announced that it had deployed its first fully driverless truck on April 27. Urmson was seated in the back seat for the initial run.
“We are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads,” Urmson said in a news release on May 1. “Riding in the back seat for our inaugural trip was an honor of a lifetime – the Aurora Driver performed perfectly, and it’s a moment I’ll never forget.”
Soon after, it was revealed that Aurora’s driverless runs were extremely limited. The company was operating only two driverless trucks. Additionally, the trucks were limited to running in the daylight and couldn’t operate in even light rain or windy conditions. As part of an effort to comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s warning device regulation, at least one of the trucks had a passenger in the back seat.
Urmson’s Friday, May 16 blog post said that the company had logged more than 6,000 driverless miles since the April 27 deployment. That means each truck averaged around 160 miles per day with no one in the driver’s seat.
What does Aurora mean by “observer”?
Before Aurora’s driverless deployment on April 27, the company had been operating for months with a “safety driver.” During that time, the truck utilized Aurora’s autonomous technology, but the safety driver was available to take over if needed.
In Urmson’s post, the term now used for the person in the driver’s seat is “observer.”
“This observer will not operate the vehicle – the Aurora Driver will continue to be fully responsible for all driving tasks, including pulling over to a safe location if required,” Urmson wrote. “And we’ve shown we can do that safely, with the Aurora Driver operating for more than 6,000 driverless miles along our commercial launch lane between Dallas and Houston. This change has no impact on our near-, mid- and long-term development plans.”
Aurora did not immediately respond to Land Line’s questions about whether the person in the driver’s seat possesses a CDL and would have the ability to take control of the vehicle if needed. Additionally, Paccar declined to comment and deferred questions to Aurora.
Move resolves concerns over regulation
The decision to have a human on board each truck clears up confusion about whether Aurora was complying with the federal regulation that requires the driver of a stopped commercial motor vehicle to place warning devices around the truck.
If one of Aurora’s trucks without a person on board was stopped on a shoulder, the company’s plan had been for one of its trucks with a passenger to arrive and for that person to place the warning devices.
“Aurora established effective processes for deploying warning devices when driverless trucks need to pull over to the side of the road, like in the case of a blown tire,” a company spokesperson told Land Line on May 8. “Because we have a fleet of other self-driving trucks on the road, including some with humans aboard, our trucks are often about 10 minutes away from each other. This means that, should one of our driverless trucks need to pull over, another truck with a human is often close enough to reach it and set out warning triangles if needed. Our process for placing warning triangles for self-driving trucks was thoroughly tested prior to Aurora’s Commercial Launch. This is part of Aurora’s thorough approach to safety, and our ability to safely pull over to the side of the road has been validated with evidence as part of our safety case for driverless operations.”
The move prompted questions about whether Aurora’s plan truly complied with the regulation. Now with a person in the driver’s seat of each truck, those questions are likely put to rest for now.
However, it is unclear how long Aurora plans to operate with a person in the driver’s seat. Either way, the company appears determined to expand operations from Fort Worth to El Paso, Texas, and eventually to Phoenix before the year is over. LL
Credit: Source link
