Kodiak presented the first autonomous truck for commercial use

On Tuesday, Kodiak Robotics Inc. unveiled an autonomous truck that manufacturers claim is the industry’s first driver-ready vehicle. The truck is intended for wide commercial use.

The sixth driverless truck was presented at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2024 in Las Vegas. Kodiak says the truck unveiled Tuesday is the product of «five years of real-world testing involving 5,000 loads hauled over 2.5 million miles.»

«Kodiak Driver, Kodiak’s vehicle-independent autonomous system, including its driver-ready redundant hardware platform, is designed to be safer than a human driver. Kodiak plans to bring several types of its sixth generation truck to market. The sixth generation engine has twice the GPU cores, 1.6 times the processing speed, 3 times the memory, and 2.75 times the bandwidth to run software processes compared to the first generation Kodiak engine, » – says the company’s press release.

Kodiak detailed the safety-critical redundant features built into the sixth-generation truck:

Braking. While traditional trucks are equipped with redundant braking systems, the Kodiak takes safety one step further. The Kodiak air brake system consists of three separate brake actuators, simultaneously controlled by Kodiak’s proprietary software. In the event of failure of any of the brake drives, backup systems will prevent loss of control and ensure a safe stop of the truck.

Steering. The steering system includes two redundant ZF actuators controlled by the Kodiak Safety System. According to Kodiak’s safety analysis, in the event of any failure of the primary steering drive, the steering system seamlessly switches to the secondary drive to maintain full control without compromising track dynamics and placing it in a safe state.

ACE system. Like the fourth and fifth generation Kodiak trucks, the sixth generation truck includes Kodiak ACE, a proprietary, purpose-built, highly integrated safety computer. ACE is responsible for ensuring that the Kodiak Driver can direct the truck to a safe location in the unlikely event of a critical system failure.

Nutrition. The sixth-generation track includes a redundant power system that supplies power to computers, sensors, actuators and all other electrical systems. The power system is divided into two completely isolated subsystems, which ensure that all safety systems can perform their functions in the event of a failure of one of them.

Other features include SensorPods™ containing LiDAR sensors, microphones to detect hazards or emergency vehicles, and redundant LTE links.

This version of the truck will be used for unmanned transportation between Dallas and Houston this year.