Kodiak Robotics is touting its latest milestone in fully autonomous commercial vehicles today after completing a driverless truck delivery to partner and customer Atlas Energy Solutions in Texas. The delivery marks a key step in beginning commercialized autonomous operations as early as next year.
Kodiak Robotics was founded in 2018 to develop an autonomous technology stack that is purpose-built for long-haul trucks to make the freight industry safer and more efficient.
Since then, Kodiak has established a unique modular hardware approach that integrates sensors into a holistic sensor-pod structure optimized for perception and scale. In 2019, the company completed its first autonomous commercial delivery with a safety driver behind the wheel, followed by a disengage-free delivery in 2020, with the Kodiak Driver operating 205 miles between Dallas and Houston without taking control of the system.
In 2022, Kodiak began working with the US Army to adapt its “Driver” autonomous technology for defense applications. Earlier this year, it deemed itself the first driverless truck company to build “an autonomous platform with all the redundancies required for safe driverless deployment.”
Today, Kodiak showcased those driverless class 8 trucks in action, delivering sand for its client Atlas Energy Solutions.
See Kodiak’s driverless truck in action in West Texas
Through a previously established partnership with Atlas, Kodiak has successfully completed its first driverless truck delivery. The route was through the Permian Basin in West Texas, described as a truly challenging environment for truckers due to its hot, arid landscape.
The Texas Department of Transportation states that the Permian Basin accounted for 7% of all traffic fatalities in Texas in 2021, despite housing less than 2% of the state’s entire population. As such, its dirt roads offered an excellent litmus test for Kodiak and its autonomous Driver truck technology, which proved successful as you’ll see in the video below.
Kodiak states this driverless truck milestone is merely the beginning of its partnership with Atlas and it is already upfitting two purpose-built trucks with its Gen6 hardware stack to support its client. Atlas intends to deploy those two driverless trucks from Kodiak into its commercial fleet operations in early 2025.
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