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![The Kodiak sixth-generation driverless truck includes redundant features for safety.](https://www.therobotreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Kodiak_Driverless-Truck_1-featured.jpg)
Kodiak’s sixth-generation driverless truck. | Supply: Kodiak Robotics
Kodiak Robotics Inc. launched its sixth-generation, driverless-ready semi truck at CES in Las Vegas this week. The corporate mentioned its self-driving truck is designed for scaled deployment and builds on 5 years of real-world testing. This testing included 5,000 masses carried over greater than 2.5 million miles.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based firm mentioned it’ll use the brand new truck for its personal driverless operations on roadways between Dallas and Houston this 12 months.
“Over the course of two.5 million miles, we’ve efficiently demonstrated that our self-driving vehicles can face up to the tough surroundings of long-haul trucking from each a platform integrity and a software program perspective,” mentioned Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, in a launch.
“This truck essentially demonstrates that we’ve accomplished the work mandatory to securely deal with driverless operations,” he added. “Whereas we proceed to work with main truck producers, the know-how we developed is deployment-ready, uncoupled from OEM timelines and truck manufacturer-agnostic, which permits us to maneuver quick whereas holding security on the forefront.”
Kodiak mentioned the most recent version of its autonomous semi-trucks has all the mandatory redundant safety-critical {hardware}. These embrace braking, steering, and sensors, in addition to the software program required for driverless operations at scale.
Redundancy is the important thing to security, says Kodiak
Kodiak famous that its newest autonomous semi-truck contains redundancy throughout all safety-critical capabilities. These embrace a redundant braking system, redundant steering, and redundant energy.
Whereas conventional semi-trailer vehicles have redundant braking programs, Kodiak mentioned it needed to take this additional. Its vehicles’ pneumatic braking programs encompass three particular person brake actuators.
All three actuators are concurrently managed by Kodiak’s system. Which means that if any of them fail, the backup programs can stop lack of management and produce the truck to a protected cease.
The corporate has additionally outfitted its vehicles with a dual-redundant steering system that features two redundant ZF actuators managed by Kodiak’s security system.
Based mostly on the corporate‘s security evaluation, if the first steering actuator experiences any kind of failure, then the steering system switches to the secondary actuator. This enables the system to take care of full management and transfer the automobile right into a protected state with out compromising the automobile dynamics.
The vehicles have a redundant energy system that powers the computer systems, sensors, actuators, and all different electrical programs. Kodiak mentioned its energy system is cut up into two totally remoted subsystems. These subsystems make sure that all security programs can nonetheless carry out a protected “fallback” ought to both fail.
As well as, Kodiak asserted that every one of its vehicles, not simply the newest technology, are outfitted with its custom-designed Actuation Management Engine (ACE). The ACE system is a high-integrity security laptop answerable for making certain that the Kodiak Driver can information the truck to a fallback out of the circulation of visitors ought to a important system failure happen.
Lastly, the truck features a redundant LTE communications hyperlinks, permitting the truck to ascertain dependable communications with Kodiak’s redundant command facilities in Lancaster, Texas, and Mountain View, Calif.
![Kodiak truck.](https://www.therobotreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Kodiak_Driverless-Truck_4.jpg)
Kodiak’s newest technology of vehicles options upgraded SensorPods and extra. | Supply: Kodiak Robotics
Contained in the sixth-generation truck
Like its earlier vehicles, Kodiak’s sixth-generation automobile options its Kodiak Driver, a vehicle-agnostic self-driving system and driverless-ready {hardware} platform. The vehicle-agnostic facets of the motive force will come in useful as a result of the corporate plans to roll out its sixth-generation platform to a number of automobile sorts.
Kodiak claimed that its newest vehicles function twice the GPU processor cores, 1.6 occasions larger processing velocity, thrice extra reminiscence, and a couple of.75 occasions larger bandwidth to run software program processes than its first-generation truck.
This newest technology of vehicles additionally options upgrades to Kodiak’s proprietary SensorPods, which home the sensors and are pre-calibrated and pre-built for quick and simple repairs. Kodiak improved its SensorPods with two higher-resolution lidars, which at the moment are automotive-grade. It additionally has two extra aspect radar sensors to enhance long-range detection.
In complete, Kodiak outfitted its vehicles with 12 cameras, 4 lidar sensors, and 6 radar sensors. To course of this elevated sensor knowledge, the self-driving truck maker depends on NVIDIA GPUs.
The corporate additionally added top-mounted, extra-bright hazard lights to its SensorPods. Kodiak designed these lights to adjust to the autonomous trucking trade’s utility for an exemption to Federal Motor Car Security Regulation 392.22. This regulation requires conventional truck drivers to position warning gadgets on a roadway after a breakdown.
Since driverless vehicles received’t be capable to place street flares or different gadgets alongside the roadway, Kodiak mentioned these lights might be used to alert different drivers to the presence of a truck on the aspect of the street, pending Federal Motor Provider Security Administration approval.
Kodiak additionally outfitted its vehicles with microphones, in order that its vehicles can detect and establish the presence of emergency autos and different suspicious sounds that might signify a hazard.
Kodiak’s sixth-generation truck follows the corporate’s partnership with Pilot to open a truckport for launching and touchdown autonomous vehicles. It has additionally teamed up with Loadsmith, C.R. England and Tyson, Ahead and extra.
Kodiak plans to proceed enhancing its self-driving vehicles. For example, it plans to combine an Ambarella CV3-AD AI area management system on chip (SoC).