Autonomous Solutions
Our approach to safety
A legacy of safe innovations
Safety has been the guiding principle for Volvo for 100 years and continues to guide our approach at Volvo Autonomous Solutions.
A holistic view on safety
Safety goes beyond simply ensuring hardware and software meet our rigorous safety standards; it also includes infrastructure, operations, and predictive maintenance to create complete transport solutions.
Redundancy
We have designed our autonomous trucks for public roads with integrated redundancy, meaning that safety-critical systems have a backup. If one of these systems fails, the redundant system will be deployed so that the vehicle can be brought to a safe stop.
100 years of putting safety first
At Volvo, safety is at the heart of everything we do. When traffic accidents were claiming countless lives, Volvo revolutionized safety by inventing the three-point safety belt and freely sharing the patent with the industry, an innovation credited with saving over a million lives since 1959.
Today, Volvo continues to build on that legacy. Active safety features such as lane keeping, collision warning with emergency braking, and stability control continue to protect people in and around our trucks. Alongside these features, we extend safety beyond driver assistance.
Our autonomous solutions remove people from high-risk areas such as mines and quarries. They also tackle long, tiring highway routes, freeing drivers to focus on shorter assignments closer to home.
The goal has not changed since 1927, from seat belts to advanced driver assistance and autonomy, it is the same safety mission pushed further. At Volvo Autonomous Solutions we continue this commitment with pride.
Safety is not just a feature. It’s our guiding principle.
Our holistic approach to safety
Achieving world-class safety requires more than technology. For our autonomous solution for confined areas, Autona / earth, this begins with a deep understanding of the operational design domain (ODD). Every environment presents unique challenges, and those insights shape the way we design and build the vehicle, develop the software that drives it, and plan the routes, sites, infrastructure, and connectivity that surround it. Before any deployment in a mine or quarry, we validate and test the complete solution through extensive simulation and controlled real-world operations.
By viewing safety as an ecosystem of people, technology, processes, and environments working together, we reduce the risk for our teams, our partners, and the communities we serve.
Our on-road solution, Autona / freight, is built on a redundant base truck integrated with our virtual driver partners’ technology. Development of the autonomous on-road transport solution follows a holistic safety process that looks at the entire ecosystem; we work closely with our customers, site owners, first responders, land and road authorities, and law enforcement. Together, we shape practical procedures, clear communication pathways, and unified standards that allow anyone who interacts with our products to do so safely and confidently.
In the end, safety is not simply a feature of the truck; it is the operating principle of the entire service. For Autona / earth, it includes safety built into the surrounding infrastructure, geofenced routes and procedures monitored from the control room. For Autona / freight, it includes AV-ready hubs with defined hand off zones, predictive maintenance, and first responder coordination.
Our autonomous trucks
Our holistic approach to safety is most evident in the trucks themselves. They are purpose-built for autonomy,
engineered with multi-layered safety, and proven through rigorous simulation and real-world testing.
The Volvo VNL Autonomous
The Volvo FH Autonomous
Our holistic approach to safety
Our holistic approach to safety is integrated into our development processes, allowing us to design and build systems capable of performing safely in the intended environment. By collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders, including first responders and law enforcement, we help drive industry standards to enhance safety across the board.
Our commitment to safety is also reflected in testing and verification protocols, which uphold Volvo’s safety standards through both simulations and real-world testing of trucks, vehicles, infrastructure, connectivity, and cloud systems.
