Aurora Innovation, Inc., doing business as Aurora, is a self-driving vehicle technology company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[1] Aurora has developed the Aurora Driver, a computer system that can be integrated into cars for autonomous driving. Aurora was co-founded by Chris Urmson, the former chief technology officer of Google/Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving team, which became known as Waymo,[2][3] as well as by Sterling Anderson, former head of Tesla Autopilot, and Drew Bagnell, former head of Uber's autonomy and perception team.[4][5][6]
Aurora was founded in 2017 by Chris Urmson, the former chief technology officer of Google/Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving team, which became known as Waymo.[2][3][9] Previously, Urmson was a member of Carnegie Mellon's Red Team, which competed in DARPA's Grand Challenges for autonomous vehicles.[10][11][12] His two co-founders are Sterling Anderson, former head of Tesla Autopilot, and Drew Bagnell, former head of Uber's autonomy and perception team.[2][5][4]
In January 2018, Aurora signed deals with Volkswagen and Hyundai to develop self-driving software for commercial vehicles.[13] Also in January 2018, at CES 2018, Nvidia partnered with Aurora to provide hardware for Aurora's self-driving systems.[14][15][16]
In October 2018, Aurora became the first self-driving vehicle company authorized to test its vehicles in Pennsylvania.[17]
In January 2019, the company raised financing at a $2 billion valuation.[18]
In May 2019, Aurora acquired Blackmore, a Bozeman, Montana-based company focusing on Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) lidar.[19][20][21] In June 2019, Aurora announced a partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to develop self-driving technology in commercial vans.[21] As a result of this partnership, the company was able to acquire Chrysler Pacifica minivans for its fleet of test vehicles.[22][23] In June 2019, Volkswagen also announced they would be ending their partnership with Aurora.[24]
Aurora expanded its operations to Texas in June 2020, bringing a fleet of test vehicles into the Dallas-Fort Worth area.[22] In July 2020, Aurora debuted its own long-range lidar system called "FirstLight."[25]
In September 2020, the company moved its headquarters to the Strip District.[26][27]
In December 2020, Aurora acquired Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), Uber's self-driving unit. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi subsequently joined Aurora's board of directors. Uber also invested $400 million in Aurora and took a 26% ownership stake in the company.[28][29]
In January 2021, Aurora partnered with Paccar to develop its first commercial product, a driverless truck. Their technology will be paired with Paccar's Peterbilt 579 and Kenworth T680 semi-trucks.[30][31][32][33]
In March 2021, Aurora acquired 5D lidar company OURS Technology, a silicon photonics startup.[38][39] Also in March, Aurora announced it was partnering with Volvo Group to develop driverless trucks. Of the three largest truck manufacturers, Aurora has partnered with two; the third, Daimler, had previously announced it was partnering with Waymo for self-driving technology.[40]
In March 2022, Aurora unveiled its test fleet of autonomous Toyota Siennarobotaxi.[44] Following this, In May 2022, Aurora announced the development of the Aurora Beacon platform. The platform is a cloud-based mission control system designed for customers to optimise operations of autonomous vehicles via real time metrics such as status, location, and health of vehicles.[45]
In May 2022, Aurora announced the expansion of the organization's self-driving freight pilot with FedEx. The expansion is to include service from Fort Worth to El Paso, Texas. The new route challenged the company for its longest freight truck journey of about 600 miles, in which they will operate on a weekly basis. As of May, Aurora and FedEx have completed a total of 60,000 miles with zero safety incidents, according to the company.[46]
In March 2023, Aurora had 28 Class 8 self-driving trucks that run on public roads and are used with safety backup drivers.[47] Aurora issued a joint application along with Waymo to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The companies requested a five-year exemption from rules that require drivers to place reflective triangles or a flare around a stopped tractor-trailer truck, to alert other drivers. Waymo and Aurora instead want to use warning beacons mounted on the truck cab, to avoid needing human drivers.[48]
The company developed the Aurora Driver, a system that consists of sensors, software, and hardware. It can be installed in passenger or commercial automobiles, converting them into self-driving vehicles.[50][51][52] The Aurora Driver's software uses data from its sensors to devise a safe path through a given route, while its computer powers these components and integrates them with the vehicle.[52] The system's sensors use Aurora's FirstLight lidar, which was developed from Blackmore's FMCW lidar technology.[25][53] The first vehicle to be outfitted with the Aurora Driver was the Toyota Sienna.[54]
Conventional lidar uses pulses of light to acquire information about objects surrounding the sensor, including distance and velocity.[55] In contrast, FMCW lidar uses a low-powered continuous beam of light, enabling faster acquisition of distance, velocity, and acceleration of surrounding objects, but often requires bulky mirrors and rangefinders. By acquiring OURS, Aurora hopes to reduce the size of the FMCW lidar hardware.[56] Aurora plans to release the next generation of Aurora Driver, named "Fusion", in 2023.[55]
A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car (AC), driverless car, robotaxi, robotic car or robo-car, is a car that is capable of operating with reduced or no human input. Self-driving cars are responsible for all driving activities, such as perceiving the environment, monitoring important systems, and controlling the vehicle, which includes navigating from origin to destination.
Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems to assist the operator of a vehicle such as a car, lorry, aircraft, or watercraft. A vehicle using automation for tasks such as navigation to ease but not replace human control, qualify as semi-autonomous, whereas a fully self-operated vehicle is termed autonomous.
Dmitri Dolgov is a Russian-American engineer who is the co-chief executive officer of Waymo. Previously, he worked on self-driving cars at Toyota and Stanford University for the DARPA Grand Challenge (2007). Dolgov then joined Waymo's predecessor, Google's Self-Driving Car Project, where he was an engineer and head of software. He has also been Google X's lead scientist.
Velodyne Lidar is a Silicon Valley–based lidar technology company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It was spun off from Velodyne Acoustics in 2016. As of July 2020, the company has had about 300 customers. Velodyne Lidar ships sensors to mobility industry customers for testing and commercial use in autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems, mapping, robotics, infrastructure and smart city applications. In February 2023, the company merged with Ouster.
Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
Mobileye Global Inc. is an Israeli autonomous driving company. It is developing self-driving technologies and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) including cameras, computer chips, and software. Mobileye was acquired by Intel in 2017 and went public again in 2022.
A robotaxi, also known as robot taxi, robo-taxi, self-driving taxi or driverless taxi, is an autonomous car operated for a ridesharing company.
Ottomotto LLC, d/b/a Otto, was an American self-driving technology company founded in January 2016 by Lior Ron and Anthony Levandowski.
Anthony Levandowski is a French-American self-driving car engineer. In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google's self-driving car program, now known as Waymo, and was a technical lead until 2016. In 2016, he co-founded and sold Otto, an autonomous trucking company, to Uber Technologies. In 2018, he co-founded the autonomous trucking company Pronto; the first self-driving technology company to complete a cross-country drive in an autonomous vehicle in October 2018. At the 2019 AV Summit hosted by The Information, Levandowski remarked that a fundamental breakthrough in artificial intelligence is needed to move autonomous vehicle technology forward.
Argo AI LLC was an autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, veterans of the Google and Uber automated driving programs. Argo AI was an independent company that built software, hardware, maps, and cloud-support infrastructure to power self-driving vehicles. Argo was mostly backed by Ford Motor Co. (2017) and the Volkswagen Group (2020). At its peak, the company was valued at $7 billion.
Chris Urmson is a Canadian engineer, academic, and entrepreneur known for his work on self-driving car technology. He cofounded Aurora Innovation, a company developing self-driving technology, in 2017 and serves as its CEO. Urmson was instrumental in pioneering and advancing the development of self-driving vehicles since the early 2000s.
Cruise LLC is an American self-driving car company headquartered in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2013 by Kyle Vogt and Dan Kan, Cruise tests and develops autonomous car technology. The company is a largely autonomous subsidiary of General Motors. Following a series of incidents, it suspended operations in October 2023, and Kyle Vogt resigned as CEO in November 2023. The company began returning its vehicles to public roads in May 2024.
A self-driving truck, also known as an autonomous truck or robo-truck, is an application of self-driving technology aiming to create trucks that can operate without human input. Alongside light, medium, and heavy-duty trucks, many companies are developing self-driving technology in semi trucks to automate highway driving in the delivery process.
Nuro, Inc. is an American robotics company based in Mountain View, California. Founded by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, Nuro develops autonomous delivery vehicles and is the first company to receive an autonomous exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Luminar Technologies Inc. is an American technology company that develops vision-based lidar and machine perception technologies, primarily for self-driving cars. The company's headquarters and main research and development facilities are in Orlando, Florida; a second major office is located in Palo Alto, California.
Zoox, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon developing autonomous vehicles that provide mobility as a service. It is headquartered in Foster City, California and has offices of operations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, Washington. Zoox sits in the Amazon Devices & Services organization alongside other Amazon units like Amazon Lab126, Amazon Alexa, and Kuiper Systems.
Yandex self-driving car is an autonomous car project of the Russian-based technology company Yandex. The first driverless prototype launched in May 2017. As of 2018, functional service was launched in Russia with prototypes also being tested in Israel and the United States. In 2019, Yandex revealed autonomous delivery robots based on the same technology stack as the company's self-driving cars. Since 2020, autonomous robots have been delivering food, groceries and parcels in Russia and the United States. In 2020, the self-driving project was spun-off into a standalone company under the name of Yandex Self-Driving Group. In 2024, Yandex SDG relaunches as Avride, following parent Nebius Group's divestment of Yandex.
Pony.ai is a global autonomous vehicle technology company co-located in Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Guangzhou.
DeepRoute.ai is a Chinese robotaxi startup based in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
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US$68 million (2022)
