Kodiak Robotics has unveiled the US Department of Defense’s first self-driving test vehicle, a Ford F-150 pickup truck that the startup outfitted with its own software and sensors.
The Department of Defense is using the vehicle to test autonomous surveillance and reconnaissance missions in rugged terrain, diverse operating conditions and GPS-challenged environments. Kodiak won a two-year, $50 million contract with the Army in December 2022, and now has another year to build and deliver two off-road-capable vehicles based on the F-150. If the pilot is successful, Kodiak could be one of the Army’s future partners as it works to develop autonomous military applications.
“Ultimately, tomorrow’s battlefield will be autonomous,” Don Burnett, CEO and co-founder of Kodiak, told TechCrunch. “We want to keep men and women out of harm’s way. This is the technology that will take us into the future of contested environments.”
Most of Kodiak’s products on the market revolve around commercializing self-driving trucks, but many advanced transportation companies see the military as a faster path to revenue. The army was moving forward Various projects Dedicated to autonomous driving, the Air Force has signed on electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) companies such as Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation to promote advanced aviation technology in national defense strategies.
As part of its partnership with the Department of Defense, Kodiak primarily provides the software and sensor suite, and will work with hardware providers to integrate the Kodiak Driver software into a purpose-built next-generation ground reconnaissance vehicle, which has not yet been designed. Or built. Kodiak and the Department of Defense were considering the idea of an ATV, but found it too small for the use case.
“[ATV-like vehicles] “They tend to be quite vulnerable and can’t carry a lot of computing, sensing, and people,” Burnett told TechCrunch. “So the F-150 was equivalent in size to the ultimate platform that the Army was seeking. It’s a very capable vehicle.”
The most important thing, from Kodiak’s perspective, is the ability to provide a suite of software and sensors that can be integrated into many different types of vehicles and serve a variety of use cases. That’s where Kodiak’s modular and interchangeable SensorPods come in, which the startup uses in its Class 8 trucks. Kodiak says it has modified its pods to suit defense applications, and the so-called DefensePod can be swapped out in the field in 10 minutes or less by a technician with no training. specialized. It took less than six months for the Kodiak Driver to be installed in the new car, according to the company.
“We have developed our autonomous driving system in a way that is feasible and broadly applicable to other off-highway environments,” Burnett said. “We think this is a strategic advantage. We want to take advantage of the fact that our system works in these dual-use environments.”