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California-based Kodiak Robotics started rolling out their self-driving automated trucks in 2018. Since its formation, the company has been working on improving its driverless freight services. In a recent blog post, the company announced a collaboration with the transportation contractor and USPS carrier, 10 Roads Express, in order to expand their service routes to Florida.
Kodiak launched this by completing coast-to-coast commercial deliveries, with an autonomous truck carrying cargo in a nearly 9000 kilometers round trip, following a route from San Antonio, Texas, to San Francisco, California, to Jacksonville, Florida, and back to San Antonio. The truck completed the route in under 5 days, and in the process, mapped as many as 8000 kilometers using Kodiak’s own mapping solution. Through this, the company wants to demonstrate that its automated systems also generalize to locations and routes where it has not been previously trained.
The Kodiak Robotics automated freight system comes with modular attachments and sensors, including three cameras, a lidar, and two radars, which makes maintenance easier, and allows attaching to any truck with suitable specifications. The company aims to allow equipping any truck with its autonomous system.
10 Roads Express also showed interest in using Kodiak’s autonomous driving algorithms for their own fleets as a part of this partnership.
Is unmanned vehicles the future?
Kodiak has improved and expanded its services in the past year by mapping many more roads and lanes, thereby adding new and improved routes.
They also announced operations between Dallas, Texas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, partnering with CEVA Logistics and between Dallas, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, partnering with U.S. Express.
Automated freight and cargo can potentially save a lot of money and slow down inflation, according to Don Burnett, founder of Kodiak Robotics, by saving on investment in manned vehicles, data collection and labeling, and vehicle maintenance.