INTERVIEW: CONTINENTAL Spinning 360° lidar in the current beltline near-range pods will be replaced with solid-state lidar in the 2027 pods being developed by Continental Triangular tussle position from a technology perspective and from a safety culture perspective,” he explains. “We want to make sure that this gets done right. We’ve been playing in that space for a long time, and we think it’s ready for commercial scale. The worst thing that could happen is to do something ethically wrong or have a safety incident and you ruin the whole opportunity, so it was important for us to find a partner who we believed had the right culture. From that perspective, it was a good starting point. “Throughout the codesign process, we’re constantly asking questions,” he continues. “They’ll either explain to us why it works in the way that it should, or we bring something to the table that helps. One plus one is greater than two. Bringing a Tier 1 world into a technology company is difficult. We’re constantly challenging each other, and I think the combination has been healthy for both companies.” Aurora is currently locked in a legal battle with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), after it asked to be exempt from a regulation requiring the placement of warning devices around trucks stopped along highways. As a result, Aurora has now turned to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to overturn the decision. The current regulation requires a truck driver to activate their hazards and place safety triangles or flares up to 100m behind the stopped vehicle, to warn other drivers. Aurora submitted a request in January 2023 to use flashing warning beacons on the cab of the truck instead, but the FMCSA claimed Aurora failed to provide adequate data to show its alternative provided the same level of safety as the traditional approach. Cleaning solution At CES, Continental showed the inside of a prototype high-level side pod, revealing the combination of sensors and the cleaning system that will keep them in use. Heating elements heat the camera lenses to keep away ice and snow; there is a cleaning nozzle behind the front face and a catch tray to keep the fluids away from the exposed surface of the truck. The secondary surface for the imaging radar sensor has a heating element inside, and the three mid-range lidar sensors can also be heated and cleaned with air and fluid. With Aurora trucks operating hub-to-hub, fluids will be replenished as part of regular inspection, servicing and maintenance. Says McClain, “Keeping all those sensing modalities up and running is important, but if you lose some you can still continue to operate the truck.” THE VOLVO VNL AUTONOMOUS TRUCK HAS AROUND 600 PART NUMBERS THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM A STANDARD VNL TRUCK He adds that testing the cleaning system has drawn on a combination of Aurora’s experience with its current trucks and Continental’s mass-production automotive knowledge. “Their current cleaning system looks a little different to this one, but they have experience of when it’s working or not, how much fluid volume they need, how to optimize fluid volume with different nozzle types, and so on. We take that experience, build it into the designs and then run it through the typical automobile qualification process – in cold chambers, on vibration tables and so on – to make sure it’s ready for the life it’s going to lead.” “WE’VE BEEN PLAYING IN THAT SPACE FOR A LONG TIME, AND WE THINK IT’S READY FOR COMMERCIAL SCALE” Jeremy McClain, Continental Not all autonomous truck programs have stayed the course, but McClain is confident that Aurora’s will succeed where others have failed. “I think the approach to divide and conquer is what is different in this case,” he assesses. “Many autonomy players in the past have tried to vertically integrate everything themselves. I think what Aurora has done well is to partner, where partners can bring something better. They are letting the truck OEM do the things it is good at: homologate the trucks, do the integration, take care of redundancy on the power supply, steering, braking and so on. Aurora mainly takes care of the software and the overall system architecture. Then they brought us in early, as well as others from the fleets and from service providers like Ryder, to make sure that the whole ecosystem was built in parallel. When they prove that the technology is ready and robust, they will also have the other commercial scaling paths [already] running.” Different this time 24 ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International April 2025
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