Kodiak Robotics truck in entrance of an IKEA retailer.
Source: Kodiak Robotics
Self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics claimed that it has started a pilot method with IKEA in Texas.
A semitruck outfitted with Kodiak’s autonomous driving process is producing everyday shipping and delivery runs from an IKEA warehouse close to Houston to a retail store close to Dallas, around 300 miles away.
The vehicles have human protection motorists on board, but they’re getting driven by Kodiak’s autonomous-driving method.
Kodiak’s CEO, Don Burnette, claimed that he is just not on the lookout to set truck drivers out of enterprise – in simple fact, he’s aiming to make their lives a lot easier.
“Adopting autonomous trucking technological innovation can enhance drivers’ quality of lifetime by concentrating on the community driving employment most want to do,” Burnette reported. “Together [with IKEA] we can increase protection, boost doing work conditions for motorists, and build a much more sustainable freight transportation technique.”
This just isn’t Kodiak’s first self-driving rodeo. The organization has been jogging freight in Texas with its autonomous test vehicles given that 2019, and recently opened a new route among Dallas and Oklahoma Metropolis. Kodiak has also executed pilot assessments with logistics giants Werner Enterprises and U.S. Xpress, operating self-driving vehicles on routes from Dallas to Lake Metropolis, Florida, and Atlanta, respectively.
Texas has become a hotbed for self-driving truck screening, in part for the reason that of favorable laws — and also because the lengthy freeway stretches involving its metropolitan areas are excellent for automation. Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary that grew out of the Google Self-Driving Car or truck Venture, has been tests a fleet of self-driving Freightliner semitrucks (with human protection drivers) on a route involving Dallas and Houston for numerous months.
Self-driving truck startup Aurora Innovation has also been tests vehicles in Texas. Aurora started a Texas pilot with Werner Enterprises in April, operating on a 600-mile extend concerning Fort Truly worth and El Paso. Yet another startup, TuSimple, has been screening its self-driving semitrucks in Arizona and is preparing to grow to Texas next year.
