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

30 Dossier | Kodiak Driver some GPIO ports –we work with various Tier 1 suppliers for our actuators – so they take care of our proprietary steering and braking processes. Drive-by-wire systems are not standard for Class 8 trucks yet, so we put in actuators that can communicate electronically with the ACEs.” NVH and ruggedness While passenger cars are generally built to be driven for 100,000-200,000 miles, Class 8 trucks are meant to last for a million, and to do so while enduring harsh weather and persistently severe noise and vibration. Kodiak’s hardware therefore had to be capable of enduring such conditions before it could be entrusted to fulfil any of its end-users’ other requirements, or it would not give the mileages and lifetimes fleet operators would want. “Many AV [autonomous vehicle] companies these days just take computer and sensor hardware they’ve designed for passenger vehicles, and stick it on a truck, but it doesn’t last,” Wendel says. “We’ve focused on trucking from the beginning, so our hardware is built and enclosed to fit the trucking ecosystem, and to endure things like your 80,000 lb truck hitting a pothole. We found from the start of our testing that some of our sensors couldn’t actually survive a shock like that, so through trials and working with our partners we’ve gone all out to harden themagainst NVH-related failures.” To ensure their testing methods truly represented trucking conditions, Kodiak’s engineers first selected different testing standards for trucks, passenger cars and Mil-Spec vehicles. They then cross- referenced themwith vibration profiles captured from their own testing routes to determine the kind of vibration profile they ought to set their shaker tables to. Through in-house testing on those tables, all of Kodiak’s electronics have their enclosures and connections redesigned and remanufactured until the internal components’ survivability over a minimum lifetime of NVH is confirmed. “As for weather, people think heavy rain or maybe light flooding are the worst wet conditions that road trucks will be subjected to, but it’s actually the pressure washing that happens during routine maintenance,” Wendel muses. “The power of those hoses is so much worse than any rain, and that set the bar for the ingress protection we needed.” Driving safety While the truck’s AI is equipped to obey traffic laws and react appropriately to road signs, traffic lights and pedestrians, the initial trials, deliveries and roll-outs of the Kodiak Driver are being kept to freeways, away from populated areas. That has cut the amount of work Kodiak has had to do on the dangers typical of city environments. As Wendel reiterates, “Kodiak’s current operational design domain is limited to access-controlled highways like the US Interstate Highway System, where pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed. Still, our system regularly observes any pedestrians on those highways – mostly on the roads’ shoulders and, rarely, in the road – and responds safely by slowing or changing lane.” Within the limitations of their cross- country freeway routes, the ACEs and actuators are engineered such that the truck can always come to a safe stop in the worst-case scenario – such as an imminent traffic incident or a detected subsystem failure – otherwise they ensure that the truck can continue following its optimal route. “In that respect, it’s worth noting that we are the first company to show that we can execute what we call a ‘fallback manoeuvre’ on highways, also called a minimum-risk condition,” Wendel says. “Basically, 10 times per second, our system checks more than 1000 fault signals, including engine coolant temperature, tyre pressures, camera data validities and the main computer’s execution timings. “That means we can constantly and rapidly generate new routes, not just for how we can follow our preferred path down the road but also for situations where we can’t continue with those plans and their general objective. That could be through a main computer failure or a check engine light, say, and how we can get the truck to safety, potentially without multiple key subsystems. “That usually means an autonomy pull-over trajectory onto the shoulder. In one test we videoed, an engineer actually severed a cable inside the truck, and the Kodiak Driver immediately realised what had happened and pulled over until both its tractor and trailer were out of harm’s way.” February/March 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology A comparison of HD Maps (left) with Kodiak Robotics’ Sparse Maps (right). Note the clear locations of the lane markers in the latter system