Kodiak Robotics has found an autonomous solution for trucks that no longer requires a human behind the wheel.
The Californian company Kodiak Robotics Inc. has unveiled its sixth-generation self-driving truck at CES 2024 in Las Vegas. This marks a crucial advance as it can even operate on public roads without a safety driver. After five years of real-world testing involving over 5,000 loads and more than 2.5 million miles, a safety driver is no longer necessary, according to CEO Don Burnette.
The new generation of trucks is described as “driverless capable” and has redundancies in safety-critical functions such as braking, steering and drive. The technology also includes the specially developed Actuation Control Engine (ACE) for safe evasive maneuvers in the event of critical system failures. The Kodiak Driver, a vehicle-independent self-driving system, is described as safer than a human driver.
The sixth generation offers improved computing power with twice as many GPU processor cores, 1.6x processing speed, three times the memory and 2.75x the bandwidth compared to the previous model. Proprietary SensorPods are also used, replacing side mirrors and improving object detection.
Kodiak plans to integrate the Ambarella CV3-AD AI Domain Control System-on-Chip. The actual ones Truck are built by a partner company and equipped with Kodiak’s self-driving technologies.
Although the sixth generation is driverless capable, safety drivers can still be on board to intervene and monitor the system when necessary. Kodiak has been expanding its routes and customer list since 2018, including well-known companies such as Loadsmith, C.R. England, Tyson Foods, IKEA, Werner and Forward Air Corporation.
Installation of the self-driving technologies is on diesel-powered trucks for now, but Kodiak isn’t ruling out future powertrains and alternative fuel systems. However, development remains limited to available resources as Kodiak are not truck manufacturers.