How Volvo's Autonomous Trucks are Using Gen AI

Trucking underpins economies and industries worldwide. But it also has its fair share of challenges including hazardous working conditions and safety concerns – thousands of lives are lost each year in the US because of large-truck accidents – chronic driver shortages, and a significant environmental impact.

Fully autonomous transport solutions underpinned by AI can mitigate many of these issues and lay the foundations for a future-facing logistics industry that’s safer, more reliable and sustainable. 

That’s the premise behind a strategic partnership between Volvo Autonomous Solutions (V.A.S.) and Gen AI self-driving startup Waabi to jointly develop and deploy autonomous trucks in the US. The collaboration will see the companies vertically integrate the Waabi Driver virtual driver system into the Volvo VNL Autonomous, the Swedish Group's autonomous truck designed for safer and more efficient operations. 

“This partnership is an exciting next step in developing transformative autonomous transport solutions,” Shahrukh Kazmi, Chief Product Officer at V.A.S..

“By combining Volvo’s leadership in automation and safety innovation with Waabi’s expertise in AI-driven autonomous driving technology, we are delivering solutions that tackle the industry’s capacity challenges today and paving the way for scalable, reliable operations.”

How Waabi’s Gen AI is transforming trucking

Waabi is a Gen AI pioneer founded by former Uber ATG chief scientist Raquel Urtasum on the premise of taking an AI-first approach to speeding up the commercial development and deployment of autonomous vehicles. 

Urtasum claims to have spent more than two decades dedicated to inventing new AI technologies that can help prevent accidents, ensure trustworthy behaviour and meet the ‘enormous potential of AI in the physical world’. 

The result of that focus is the Waabi Driver solution. This advanced self-driving solution brings together the company’s own Gen AI-based autonomy stack as software with sensors and computers as hardware to offer a complete solution for OEMs and large-scale commercialisation.

Waabi Driver applies learned skills to unseen scenarios and geographies meaning it’s capable of the kind of complex and rapid decision making that’s needed to operate on major roads safely and efficiently. This level of intelligence is made possible by Waabi World, an advanced closed-loop simulation engine built with Gen AI.

Driving a vehicle safely and under the high pressure conditions truck drivers face is a hugely complex task – one that, for humans, is built on years of intuition, instinct and learned skills that enable instantaneous decisions. For self-driving vehicles to do that same requires the AI ‘brain’ to be taught in a specific and radical way. 

Waabi World does this by creating an immersive and reactive environment that designs tests, assess skills and teaches the self-driving ‘brain’ to learn and develop on its own by facing common and safety critical driving scenarios. 

Purpose-built for autonomy

Under the partnership, Waabi Driver will be integrated into the VNL Autonomous, V.A.S.'s first standardised and purpose built autonomous technology platform with six critical redundant systems for enabling safer operations.  

VNL Autonomous was launched in early 2024 through a collaboration with another autonomous driving company, Aurora Innovation. Waabi will use the same truck, but it will have its own tech on board.

Discussing the integration in more detail, Urtasun said: “At Waabi, we believe that vertically integrating next-generation AI technology directly into an OEM’s vehicle production is the path forward to bring safe, robust autonomous vehicles to the road, at scale.

“Volvo’s leadership in safety, commitment to excellence in engineering, and investment in forward looking innovation makes them an ideal partner to realize the future of self-driving trucks everywhere.”

Waabi intends on launching the first commercial pilots with the VNL Autonomous in early 2025, as reported in TechCrunch, with a demonstration on public roads expected for the end of the year.

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