Near the U.S. border, Aurora teaches self-driving trucks to navigate checkpoints

Self-driving startup Aurora Innovation Inc. reached a milestone Monday, declaring its autonomous driving system is now “feature complete” and possesses the capabilities needed for commercial service.

It’s a notable benchmark in the company’s efforts to launch a self-driving truck business by the end of 2024. But refining the technology comprises only one part of Aurora’s ongoing preparations.

Concurrently, the company has addressed another operational challenge on routes across the American Southwest, including Texas.

Since August, Aurora has collaborated on a first-of-its-kind pilot project with U.S. Border Patrol exploring how self-driving trucks navigate border immigration checkpoints.

These are not international border crossings. Rather, they are inland checkpoints located 25 to 100 miles from the nation’s southern and northern borders that the U.S. Border Patrol uses to deter illegal immigration, smuggling and terrorism. U.S. Border Patrol operates 35 of these checkpoints on major U.S. highways and secondary roads, according to the federal agency, a division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Some are located along routes Aurora and its competitors are eyeing for future commercial activity, particularly in Texas, a hotbed for autonomous truck testing.

“If you are not prepared to handle these Border Patrol checkpoints, you’re not going to be able to expand,” Gerardo Interiano, vice president of public affairs and government relations at Aurora, told Automotive News.

Aurora’s first planned route, between Dallas and Houston, is unaffected by the inland checkpoints. But there’s one along Interstate 10 in Sierra Blanca, Texas, on a planned route between El Paso and Fort Worth.

The Sierra Blanca checkpoint, approximately 88 miles east of El Paso, is where Aurora works with Border Patrol to develop practices and protocols for autonomous trucks.

Before Aurora’s Class 8 trucks hit the road, the company provides Border Patrol with a schedule showing anticipated arrival times, trailer identification and the number of occupants aboard.

Approaching the checkpoint, a sign with flashing lights directs all trucks — both human-driven and autonomous — to the middle and right of the three available lanes. Once they arrive, the self-driving systems read custom-designed signs that either clear them to proceed or ask them to stop for inspection.

“Sometimes we stop, and sometimes we go right through,” Interiano said.

Aurora’s trucks have traversed the checkpoint more than 200 times since the pilot program started in both autonomous and manual modes, he said. Those trips have come while the company has hauled goods for partners like Werner, Uber Freight and FedEx.

Even in autonomous mode, the trucks have a human safety driver in the cab to monitor operations for now. Eventually, Aurora will remove them and its trucks will navigate the checkpoints without onboard human supervision.

The pilot project is one aspect of how Aurora, the company founded by automated driving veterans Chris Urmson, Sterling Anderson and Drew Bagnell, is preparing for commercial service beyond building the self-driving technology itself.

Cooperation between Aurora and Border Patrol is focused only on the Sierra Blanca checkpoint for now, but they’re developing procedures they anticipate will roll out to other checkpoints in the future. Eventually, some of the practices could also work at border crossings, Interiano said.

“When we build this with our partners in government, we are thinking about how we can scale this and expand different routes,” he said.

More than 50 million vehicles pass through the checkpoints each year, said Border Patrol spokesperson Yolanda Choates. She declined to comment on the pilot program with Aurora.

The company and its competitors look at Interstate 10 as a linchpin of future activity. Stretching 2,400 miles across the southern United States between Santa Monica, Calif., and Jacksonville, Fla., its typical sunny weather is ideal for autonomous vehicles.

That’s married with economic opportunity. Trucking companies collected $875.5 billion in gross freight revenues representing 80.8 percent of the nation’s freight bill in 2021, according to the American Trucking Associations.

Freight demand for the four states on the western side of Interstate 10 is projected to increase in value 110 percent by 2045, according to a study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

“At the end of the day, we’re not just building a technology,” Interiano said. “We’re building a business.”