Self-Driving Technology Expands in California

Self-driving start-up Nuro has confirmed a significant expansion in deployment of its autonomous driving technology.

The move comes several months after the company announced it would start licensing its AI-enabled Nuro Driver to automakers and mobility providers.

Nuro Driver is an autonomous driving product, powered by Nvidia’s Drive Thor chip and Arm’s Neoverse CPU, that blends automotive-grade hardware with self-driving software that can be tailored to a variety of use cases.

It allows different vehicles to offer automation ranging from Level 2 to Level 4, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers, with the latter considered full autonomy within a specific operational design domain (ODD).

The newly announced expansion relates to its L4 capabilities and covers Mountain View and Palo Alto, California, where there would be an 83% increase in deployment area in linear miles, and Houston, Texas, where there would be a 70% increase.

According to Nuro, these advances constitute “one of the largest L4 deployments in the country” and underscore its readiness to transport people and goods in driverless vehicles on the scale of an entire city. 

Nuro’s newly extended domains are complemented by additional functionality. The company said vehicles fitted with the Nuro Driver could operate on multi-lane roads at speeds up to 35 mph and are better equipped to deal with complex scenarios, such as reacting to emergency vehicles, navigating construction zones and responding to school buses.

Related:Self-Driving Tech Startup to License System to Automakers

In addition, they could operate at night.

The company is using the extended deployment to flag its safety record, stating that its fleet has logged more than 1 million miles with zero autonomous ‘at fault’ accidents.

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Jiajun Zhu, co-founder and CEO of Nuro, said: “Since publicly unveiling our new direction a little over a month ago, we have seen tremendous interest in our AI-driven autonomy platform from automotive OEMs and mobility companies. 

“Our latest driverless deployment demonstrates the maturity and capability of our AI platform, and we’re excited for potential partners to capitalize on the performance, safety and sophistication of the Nuro Driver to build their own incredible autonomy products.”

Although no deals have been confirmed with automakers, Nuro said it is hopeful that its ability to provide what it considers to be a “road-proven, highly sophisticated and cost-effective autonomy solution” will prove attractive and also believes that its commercial independence – it is not owned by a huge company, unlike other self-driving companies  – could also prove to be an asset.

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