Nuro expands L4 autonomous vehicle operations

According to foreign media reports, autonomous vehicle developer Nuro announced that it will significantly improve the performance of its driverless cars. Nuro has launched a batch of Level 4 autonomous vehicles based on its artificial intelligence system "Nuro Driver", which are currently in use in two states in the United States and are continuing to expand their deployment scale and functional scope on the road.

Nuro is a robotics technology company founded by two former Google Waymo employees. Since its founding in 2016, Nuro has developed and publicly tested three generations of autonomous last-mile delivery vehicles, the latest of which debuted in January 2022.

As Nuro launched its self-driving operations in Palo Alto, the company has further expanded its business model, signing long-term partnerships with companies such as Uber Eats to provide self-driving food order delivery services.

Image credit: Nuro

In September, Nuro announced a new business model that involves licensing its Nuro Driver platform to other automotive OEMs and mobility service providers.

Nuro sees the potential of its advanced autonomous driving system, which combines automotive-grade hardware and artificial intelligence autonomous driving software, to enable mobility platforms and passenger cars to achieve up to Level 4 autonomous driving.

Nuro said it has expanded its Level 4 autonomous vehicle operating network to three cities in two states, hailing it as one of the largest Level 4 autonomous vehicle deployments in the U.S. The expansion applies to two regions: Palo Alto and Mountain View, California, which increased deployment by 83%, and Houston, Texas, which increased deployment by 70%.

Nuro’s autonomous delivery vehicle advancements are largely due to the Nuro Driver artificial intelligence system, but the company also explains that its newly expanded operational design domain (ODD) brings more technological advances to autonomous vehicles:

• Driving on multi-lane roads at speeds up to 35 mph (56 kph)

  
  

• Improved handling of complex scenarios such as responding to a moving emergency vehicle, navigating a construction zone, and responding to a moving school bus.

  
  

• New night driving function greatly improves service availability

Nuro said that to date, its fleet has driven more than 1 million miles (about 1.6 million kilometers) of autonomous driving without any accidents caused by the autonomous driving system. The system is designed with cost-effective automotive-grade components and can be deployed on a large scale in a variety of vehicle types and usage scenarios, which provides favorable conditions for licensing its technology to original equipment manufacturers.