Kodiak Robotics truck in front of an IKEA store.
Source: Kodiak Robotics
Self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics mentioned that it has started a pilot program with IKEA in Texas.
A semitruck geared up with Kodiak’s autonomous driving technique is creating day by day delivery runs from an IKEA warehouse around Houston to a retailer shut to Dallas, roughly 300 miles absent.
The vehicles have human safety drivers on board, but they’re currently being pushed by Kodiak’s autonomous-driving process.
Kodiak’s CEO, Don Burnette, explained that he isn’t really looking to set truck drivers out of small business – in point, he’s aiming to make their life easier.
“Adopting autonomous trucking technology can enhance drivers’ high quality of everyday living by focusing on the nearby driving positions most desire to do,” Burnette explained. “With each other [with IKEA] we can enrich security, increase functioning conditions for drivers, and create a additional sustainable freight transportation system.”
This just isn’t Kodiak’s very first self-driving rodeo. The company has been functioning freight in Texas with its autonomous exam vehicles because 2019, and recently opened a new route among Dallas and Oklahoma City. Kodiak has also carried out pilot assessments with logistics giants Werner Enterprises and U.S. Xpress, jogging self-driving vans on routes from Dallas to Lake Town, Florida, and Atlanta, respectively.
Texas has come to be a hotbed for self-driving truck tests, in section mainly because of favorable laws — and also for the reason that the long freeway stretches in between its towns are ideal for automation. Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary that grew out of the Google Self-Driving Motor vehicle Venture, has been tests a fleet of self-driving Freightliner semitrucks (with human security motorists) on a route between Dallas and Houston for various months.
Self-driving truck startup Aurora Innovation has also been screening vehicles in Texas. Aurora commenced a Texas pilot with Werner Enterprises in April, operating on a 600-mile extend amongst Fort Really worth and El Paso. One more startup, TuSimple, has been testing its self-driving semitrucks in Arizona and is organizing to increase to Texas up coming calendar year.