Autonomous truck technology maker Torc Robotics has announced a new phase in its strategic collaboration with Edge Case Research, a frontier technologies and safety-critical systems leader. The partnership will focus on developing a production-ready safety case for Level 4 autonomous trucks, with Edge Case conducting independent assessments of Torc’s driverless safety framework.
“With Edge Case Research, we’re partnering with them to help us with our driverless safety case. And I think in the industry right now, a safety case is the best practice that many of the AV companies are using,” said Steve Kenner, chief safety officer at Torc, in an interview with FreightWaves.
The initiative is part of a larger commitment by Torc to safety and independent validation as it moves toward production and commercialization. Edge Case will assess Torc’s Driverless Safety Case Framework and Evidence Sufficiency Criteria, with future plans to evaluate completed safety case evidence.
“This partnership with Torc represents a pivotal step forward in advancing autonomous trucking safety,” said Nathan Parker, chief executive officer of Edge Case, in a press release. “By leveraging our deep experience across autonomy domains, we’re helping ensure that Torc’s safety case is not only rigorous and transparent, but also production-ready for real-world deployment.”
For Torc, when validating a safety case and measuring it up to human drivers, Kenner emphasized the importance of concrete evidence: “A process might be that we have an incident and emergency response process in case we get into a crash.” Performance metrics provide another form of evidence, such as measuring hard braking events per mile driven compared to professional CDL drivers.
The collaboration addresses what Kenner describes as a “trust deficit” between AV companies, regulators, and the public. “I think our industry has a trust deficit with regulators and the general public. They’re still not super comfortable when you see surveys about how they feel about autonomous vehicles on the road,” Kenner noted.
The partnership supports Torc’s goal of launching fully driverless commercial autonomous trucks for long-haul applications in the U.S. by 2027, with safety assessments aligned with applicable AVSC Best Practices and guidance from the Open Autonomy Safety Case.
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