Thanks to Artificial Intelligence combined with a powerful computer and sensors that can see beyond the length of four football fields, Aurora Innovation, Inc., is the first company to operate commercial self-driving trucks on public roads in America with the launch of their service in Texas.
According to a May 1 statement from the company, the service has been making regular driverless customer deliveries between Dallas and Houston following the closure of the technology’s safety case.
The safety case tested Aurora’s flagship product, the Aurora Driver, an SAE L4 self-driving system, with a safety driver for four years. Over the period, the Aurora Driver covered some 3 million autonomous miles and delivered more than 10,000 customer loads. According to Aurora, the Aurora Driver “demonstrated extraordinary capabilities, including predicting red light runners, avoiding collisions, and detecting pedestrians in the dark hundreds of meters away.”
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.
What sealed the leap into autonomous commercial deliveries without a safety driver was Aurora’s Verifiable AI approach to autonomy. Verifiable AI helped to examine and validate the Aurora Driver’s decision-making and adherence to the rules of the road, helping Aurora to close the Aurora Driver’s safety case.
“We founded Aurora to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. Now, we are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads,” Chris Urmson, Aurora’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. “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.”
While most states in America currently allow driverless vehicles with various stipulations, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott highlighted his state’s No. 1 ranking for technology and innovation.
“Texas continues to attract emerging industries because we offer an environment that welcomes entrepreneurs and encourages innovation — key factors in Texas’ unmatched economic success. Texas ranks No. 1 for technology and innovation, and that continues as we welcome America’s first self-driving trucks,” he said in a statement.
“These new, autonomous semis on the I-45 corridor will efficiently move products, create jobs, and help make our roadways safer,” he added. “Texas offers businesses the freedom to succeed, and the Aurora Driver will further spur economic growth and job creation in Texas. Together, through innovation, we will build a stronger, more prosperous Texas for generations.”
Aurora’s commercial self-driving trucking service is expected to expand to El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, by the end of 2025. It will also likely be a game-changer in America’s trillion-dollar trucking industry, which is challenged by an aging driver population with high turnover rates and growing operating costs.
Aurora’s launch customers were identified as Uber Freight, a market-leading enterprise technology company powering intelligent logistics, and Hirschbach Motor Lines, a veteran-owned carrier that delivers time- and temperature-sensitive freight, according to the company’s release.
In 2021, two years after partnering with autonomous vehicle startup Gatik AI to get goods delivered using autonomous vehicles, multinational retail giant Walmart Inc. also began using fully driverless trucks to deliver online grocery orders in Arkansas.
That technological breakthrough came just three years after 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang warned in his 2018 book, The War on Normal People, that America is careening toward a dystopian future without jobs due to increased automation and technological advances.
Yang, who proposed giving every adult citizen $1,000 a month in universal basic income to blunt the blow from automation, noted at the time that more than 4 million jobs had already been destroyed by robots, software, Artificial Intelligence, and a third of all American workers were “at risk of permanent unemployment.”
“And this time, the jobs will not come back,” he warned.
Among the industries he predicted would be hardest hit is trucking.
The Government Accountability Office released a report in 2019 outlining how federal agencies were not doing enough to prepare for the eventual automation of the trucking industry, as consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimated that some 50% of all work activities have the potential to be automated by 2055 or sooner.
“We are confident that between 2 million and 3 million Americans who drive vehicles for a living will lose their jobs in the next 10 to 15 years. Driving a truck is the most common occupation in 29 states,” Yang wrote in his book.
“Self-driving vehicles are one of the most obvious job-destroying technologies, but there are similar innovations ahead that will displace cashiers, fast food workers, customer service representatives, administrative assistants, and even well-paid white-collar jobs like wealth managers, lawyers, and insurance agents.”
Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost
