Aurora has a great blog post up about their upcoming Aurora Horizon service, which will operate with their upcoming self-driving trucks. In particular, the post features a great graphic describing “the middle mile” of autonomous trucking.
“…our customers will drop off and pick up their trailers at our terminals, which are positioned at major freight hubs along our launch lanes, and the Aurora Driver will take care of the long hauls.”
The blog post further describes the inspections and documentation that are required before and after the journey. At the end, Aurora mentions the long-term plan to cover the “first mile” and “last mile”, as well.
“In the future, as we mature our technology, we plan to transition to an end-to-end driver-as-a-service model-where Aurora Driver-powered trucks move customer loads to and from warehouses, and ultimately from distribution centers to stores…”
All of this is subject to change, of course. Since Aurora is a public company the blog post finishes with some boilerplate legalese about the future being unknowable:
“… These statements are based on management’s current assumptions and are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors …”
But as a summary of how an important player in the autonomous trucking industry thinks the business will look in the near future, this blog post is terrific.