BOZEMAN, Montana — Imagine a future when self-driven 18-wheelers navigate the most infamous mountain highways in the West — Teton Pass, Sherman Summit and Gallatin Canyon. When that future arrives, a Bozeman company built partially on research done on Lone Peak in Big Sky, Montana, could be at the forefront of this bold new reality for the trucking industry.
In December, Aurora — a self-driving technology company — announced the opening of its new 78,000-square-foot office and testing facility in Bozeman on Montana State University’s Innovation Campus. The space builds upon photonics research using lidar, a detection system which works on the principle of radar but uses light from a laser.
In 2015, Montana State graduate Trent Berg co-founded Blackmore Sensors and Analytics, a photonics and lidar company. Blackmore later started using its lidar technology to measure and track the Lone Peak Stone Glacier, which is a dense deposit of rock and ice at the foot of Lone Peak in Big Sky.
Lidar found the stone glacier is 1.5 miles long and moves 11 inches per year downhill. Skiers know it as an open slope that holds reliably good snow at Big Sky Resort.
The Lone Peak Stone Glacier, which sits at around 9,500 feet above sea level, became the unlikely starting line for the current race to claim a spot in the rapidly developing industry of autonomous trucking.
Glacial To Highway Speeds
“From Day One, our goal was to develop lidar for autonomous vehicles. We were on a mission to create the safest, most advanced, and most cost-effective lidar for vehicles in the industry,” Berg told the Montana Frontier Institute in an October interview.
Since then, the photonics industry — which develops laser tools like lidar — continues to boom in Bozeman, said Jason Yager, executive director of the industry group Montana Photonics and Quantum Alliance.
Yager explained how lidar developed in Bozeman went from tracking infamously slow glaciers to navigating 80,000-pound trucks traveling at highway speeds.
“The technology is the same, however, the application is very different,” Yager told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. The lidar — which stands for Light Detection and Ranging — uses laser pulses to detect objects and measure distances with incredible sensitivity and resolution.
“At 100 meters, they can show you perfect resolution of a human hair,” said Yager.
Self-Driving Trucks Are On The Road
When Aurora sought to expand its footprint in the self-driving trucking industry in 2019, it purchased Blackmore.
“Less than a year later, with Blackmore’s expertise in lidar architecture and digital signal processing, Aurora launched the first generation of FirstLight Lidar — its proprietary lidar sensor that can detect objects at more than 450 meters away, unlocking highway driving capabilities for autonomous trucks,” according to an Aurora fact sheet.
Aurora hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Bozeman on Dec. 12, which was attended by state elected officials, regulators and community leaders. Attendees roamed the lab space and testing facilities, where some of the 13,000 Montanans employed directly and indirectly by the photonics industry work, according to the Montana Photonics and Quantum Alliance.
“From early on, we knew Montana’s photonics leadership would be invaluable for bringing safe, scalable self-driving technology to the world,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO at Aurora, in a press release. “Our new Bozeman office deepens our commitment to the region and strengthens our ability to expand our fleet of autonomous trucks.”
In a statement to Cowboy State Daily, the company says, “Tech innovation in Montana is driving the U.S. autonomous trucking industry forward. Aurora’s driverless trucks are equipped with lidar that is designed and built in Bozeman. We expect to launch our driverless trucks in Texas in April 2025.
“Aurora currently hauls goods daily on public roads in Texas for pilot customers such as FedEx. Today, our trucks operate autonomously with vehicle operators onboard as backup.”
The self-driving technology is attached to the outside of a truck on either side and on top. (Courtesy Aurora) 
A truck equipped with self-driving technology on the road. (Courtesy Aurora) 
Lidar technology developed for tracking the glacial pace of a stone glacier — a dense mix of stone and ice — at the base of Lone Peak in Big Sky, Montana, is now applied to self-driving trucks. (Courtesy Montana State University) 
Just another day navigating Gallatin Canyon between Bozeman and Big Sky Montana. (Gallatin Canyon Road Conditions) 
A truck with Aurora self-driving technology on the road. (Courtesy Aurora) 
A feet of semitrucks equipped with Aurora self-driving technology. (Courtesy Aurora) 
A truck equipped with self-driving technology on the road. (Courtesy Aurora) 
Aurora’s headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily) 
Aurora’s headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily)
A Bobsled Course For Semis
As the 2025 Montana legislative session cranks up in Helena, the laws governing self-driving vehicles are on the agenda. Senate Bill 67 was prefiled for the 2025 legislative session to "provide for the use of autonomous vehicles.”
The current draft of SB 67 establishes the state’s authority over self-driving vehicles, as it “recognizes that this state may have more challenging and variable driving conditions than other states.”
Take Gallatin Canyon between Bozeman and Big Sky. It’s 30-something miles of dark, icy and sometimes scary driving conditions, according to countless social media posts and Facebook groups like Gallatin Canyon Road Conditions.
On Monday, this group posted warnings about a plow going into a ditch and a tree falling into one lane of U.S. Highway 191.
Back in December 2023, 13 bison were struck and killed by a semi and two passenger vehicles traveling along Highway 191 south of Big Sky near West Yellowstone.
Unlike many mammals, bison do not produce a tapetum lucidum, which is the specialized reflective surface found in many animals' eyes that allows light to be reflected back through the retina. So when bison amble onto the road, the headlights of oncoming vehicles don’t reflect back from a distance and alert oncoming drivers.
Lidar, however, can detect and produce a high-resolution image of a bison’s eyelash from 100 meters away.
In the aftermath of 13 bison dying, chatter on social media singled out this tragic traffic incident as proof that self-driving vehicles are impractical.
Dr. Joseph Shaw, director of the Optical Technology Center at Montana State University, disagrees with that notion. He said a combination of sensors using cameras, radar and lidar, could pick out a herd of bison on the highway at night.
“I feel like autonomous vehicles have a huge advantage at night,” Shaw told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “They have a large advantage in safety during adverse weather, too. I say ‘large’ instead of ‘huge’ simply because lidar is also optical. So it suffers from fog and snow and rain.”
“It’s just that, it’s better than your eyes,” added Shaw. “I would rather have a lidar driving my car in a snowstorm than my eyes and my headlights.”
Will autonomous, lidar-equipped semis soon start making deliveries to Big Sky Resort, just downhill from Lone Peak Stone Glacier, where the Bozeman lidar industry got its start?
Shaw and a spokesperson for Aurora did not offer specific predictions about when driverless semis will navigate the curves of Gallatin Canyon.
“That’s coming,” Shaw said. “We’re not quite there yet. And companies like Aurora are right on that forefront.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
