Simulation needs real-world grounding

Self-driving has been "almost here" for over a decade. But somewhere between DARPA challenges and a handful of driverless trucks hauling freight between Dallas and Houston, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson’s story changed. The self-driving truck company started commercial driverless operations last April and is now scaling from a handful of trucks to hundreds this year. 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Urmson at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The pair dug into the long road from lab to highway and how physical AI differs from the LLM boom everyone else is chasing. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 

• Why long-haul trucking may crack the autonomy business case before robotaxis ever do 

• What "verifiable AI" means and why Urmson thinks end-to-end systems are a liability when lives are on the line 

• The surprisingly common-sense solution to the driverless truck safety triangle problem 

• What Aurora's roadmap looks like beyond trucking, and which companies in the autonomy space have Urmson genuinely excited 

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 

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