Uncrewed Systems Technology 048 | Kodiak Driver | 5G focus | Tiburon USV | Skypersonic Skycopter and Skyrover | CES 2023 | Limbach L 2400 DX and L 550 EFG | NXInnovation NX 100 Enviro | Solar power focus | Protegimus Protection

28 validation tests, with aspects of other standards overlaid on that baseline where prudent. Key to that was Applied Intuition, which built the essential simulation tools Kodiak uses in development, and Scale AI, which carried out data labelling and annotation to help with Kodiak’s testing. Over the following 2 weeks in December 2018, Kodiak’s engineers installed their systems onto the truck. After that they ran the truck autonomously in their parking lot, first evaluating safety-critical benchmarks such as the truck’s ability to cede control to a driver in the event of an emergency (which Wendel confirms proved successful). “Then, in July 2019, we managed a test case of our first autonomous commercial delivery, and since it was in Texas, we opened our first real office there, where we’ve kept making commercial deliveries to learn from our customers and inform our r&d,” Wendel explains. “In December 2020, we did our first 230-mile, disengage-free commercial delivery. Technically we did four of those in a row, so it was more like 920 miles on the freeway, without the in-cabin safety driver taking over except when leaving the freeway exit ramps to enter delivery hubs. There’s a video online showing this – it’s obviously very long, but it shows every step of what we achieved.” Kodiak Driver system Kodiak tested its truck without a safety driver on a closed test track for the first time in August 2021, and in the following month unveiled its fourth-generation truck, which the company calls the Gen4. Wendel notes here that generation- centric nomenclature belies quite a fluid development philosophy, which he illustrates by pointing out that the r&d for the fifth-gen truck began only weeks after the fourth-generation’s tyres touched a public road. “The Gen4 carries what we feel is the industry’s most modular and discrete sensor suite, vastly simplifying sensor installation and maintenance compared with any other autonomous truck – and most autonomous road vehicles – and increasing safety via a plethora of sensor redundancies,” he explains. The sensor suite is contained mostly within structures at the side mirrors of the cockpit, with an additional and largely conformal sensor pod on top of the roof, although Kodiak can already disclose that the Gen5 will do away with the pod. Instead, everything perception-critical will be integrated into the mirror structures, and as of the Gen4 the mirrors can be swapped in and out very quickly. That level of modularity contributes directly to fleet uptime, a crucial metric for Kodiak’s customers, as discovered through feedback on the truck post- delivery. Having achieved that, the company says all future Kodiak truck generations will look nearly identical to the Gen4, regardless of any changes under the hood. Also, given Kodiak’s business model, the company emphasises that the truck is mainly a carrier of its main product, the Kodiak Driver technology. This consists of the sensors, actuators, processors, data links, algorithms and integration processes that can be applied to any February/March 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Most of the Kodiak Driver’s perception occurs via the SensorPods – side mirror structures containing camera, Lidar and radar sensors Capturing vibration profiles from testing routes was crucial to ensure in-house NVH tests accurately represented real trucking conditions