TuSimple, a global autonomous driving technology company, has partnered with NVIDIA to design and develop an advanced autonomous domain controller (ADC) tailored to TuSimple’s Level 4 autonomous trucking applications. The NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) will be used in the ADC design, which is specifically built for AI-based autonomous driving applications.

TuSimple’s collaboration with NVIDIA aims to speed up the company’s ability to deploy autonomous trucks on the Autonomous Freight Network (AFN) at scale by providing a production-ready computing solution that can handle both the autonomous driving system’s unique requirements and powerful computational needs (ADS).

The scalable NVIDIA DRIVE Orin SoC is the primary computer for intelligent vehicles, delivering 254 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of performance and enabling safe autonomous driving.

The ADC is a vital component of TuSimple’s autonomous driving system, functioning as a central computing unit for hundreds of TOPS, including mission-essential vision, planning, and actuation operations in autonomous semi-trucks. As a result, TuSimple will be able to accelerate the development of a high-performance, automotive-grade, and scalable ADC for future autonomous truck production operations.

TuSimple will get better control over the ADC’s capabilities as a result of this strategic vertical integration, and the ADC’s development cycle will be shortened.

“A high-performance, production-ready ADC is a critical piece to scaling our AFN, and we are taking a hands-on role to advance its development with the help of NVIDIA,” said Cheng Lu, President, and CEO of TuSimple. “We believe this move provides us a significant competitive advantage in speeding time to market and further extending our industry leadership position.”

TuSimple will provide its knowledge in establishing an advanced Level 4 ADS for semi-trucks, while NVIDIA will contribute its DRIVE Orin hardware and AI knowledge based on decades of designing cutting-edge accelerated computing platforms.

TuSimple will own the ADC reference design’s usage rights, which will provide some limited “first-use” provisions. TuSimple aims to collaborate with third-party manufacturers on the ADC’s production.

“We have been strong advocates of TuSimple from the start, first as an NVIDIA Inception member back in 2017, and now as they continue to blaze trails in the autonomous trucking industry,” said Gary Hicok, senior vice president of engineering at NVIDIA. “TuSimple is moving from development using NVIDIA GPUs to production based on DRIVE Orin — this new powerful and scalable ADC solution will help move the entire autonomous trucking industry forward.”

TuSimple began operating the world’s first driverless transport network in 2020 and now has a fleet of more than 50 autonomous trucks operating between Arizona and Florida.

See also: TuSimple has completed the first autonomous semi-truck test in Arizona