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Organization: Kodiak Robotics
Country: U.S.
Website: https://kodiak.ai/
Year Founded: 2018
Number of Employees: 101-500
Innovation Class: Application & Market
Kodiak Robotics unveiled in late 2023 its first autonomous test vehicle for the U.S. Department of Defense. A Ford F-150 pickup truck is outfitted with the Kodiak Driver system for autonomy. It is designed to handle complex military environments, diverse operational conditions, and areas with degraded GPS, as well as off-road variables like rocks, dust, mud, and water. The truck can be teleoperated if needed.
Since its founding in 2018, Kodiak has primarily focused on developing autonomous trucks. But the road to scaling autonomous vehicles has turned out to be longer than many expected.
Working with the military could be a quicker path to revenue for the company, which won a two-year, $50 million contract with the Army in December 2022.
Kodiak Robotics said it took less than six months to build the autonomous Ford F-150. If all goes well, the company could become one of the Army’s future technology partners.
The self-driving pickup truck introduces new possibilities for enhancing military logistics and operations. Unmanned transportation of supplies and personnel offers the military greater flexibility, efficiency, and safety in fulfilling its mission-critical objectives, according to Kodiak.
This work also highlights the importance of a modular, vehicle-agnostic autonomous driving system. The F-150 runs the same software as Kodiak’s autonomous long-haul trucks. The test vehicle features Kodiak DefensePods, an adapted version of Kodiak’s swappable SensorPods.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Kodiak Robotics said finding multiple use cases for its autonomous driving system is key to its future.
“Finding applications of technology that can apply to military use simultaneously with civilian and commercial use cases is the future,” the company said. “That’s where the efficiency is. That’s where the iteration is.”
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