US autonomous driving (AD) firm Nuro will now allow OEMs to license its Nuro Driver autonomy platform, enabling up to Level 4 (L4) passenger vehicles to deploy the technology for the first time, in addition to the goods segment on which the firm has previously focused.
The Nuro Driver is an AD system underpinned by technology provided by heavyweight firms such as Nvidia and Arm, that combines automotive-grade hardware with AI-powered self-driving software. Previously, the firm had used it to deploy its own fleet of custom zero-emission R+D vehicles, purpose-built for goods delivery.
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Nuro, founded by two veterans of Google's self-driving project that evolved into Waymo, claims more than one million autonomous miles completed. But it is now pivoting towards being an AD service provider, potentially abandoning (although it is not totally explicit about this) its own vehicle development ambitions.
“Nuro is concentrating its efforts on its core strength: cutting-edge autonomous technology development,” the firm says. “By focusing on advancing autonomy, Nuro is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of transportation, driving industry-wide adoption and commercialisation of autonomous technology across a broad range of vehicles and mobility applications.”
Licensing its technology will allow “automotive OEMs and mobility companies access to a commercially independent, road-proven platform, accelerating their autonomous vehicle development and deployment timelines”, it continues.
"It is not a question of if, but when L4 autonomy will become widespread. We believe Nuro is positioned to be a major contributor to this autonomous future where people and goods mobility are free flowing, representing a significant increase in the quality of life for everyone," says Jiajun Zhu, Nuro co-founder and CEO.
"Advancements in AI throughout the vehicle mean OEMs need an entirely new level of safety-enabled compute performance to deliver the benefits of autonomous technology to drivers," says Dipti Vachani, general manager, automotive line of business at Arm.
"Nuro has already made tremendous advancements in autonomous driving leveraging the performance-efficiency and functional safety leadership of Arm technology, and we are proud to continue this partnership by powering the Nuro Driver platform with the server-class performance and safety capabilities of Arm Neoverse V3AE technology."
"Built with Nvidia's end-to-end safety AV architecture, the Nuro Driver can integrate sensor processing and other safety-critical capabilities, along with AI-driven autonomy, into a single, centralised computing system," says Rishi Dhall, vice-president of automotive at Nvidia. "This enables the reliability and performance needed for safe deployment of autonomous vehicles at scale."
As part of the new licensing model, Nuro has also announced the Nuro AI Platform, “consisting of scalable and performant developer tools to support AI development and validation for the Nuro Driver”.
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