Kodiak Creates Simple Solution to an Autonomous Problem
Before we start seeing fully autonomous trucks buzzing around on the nation’s highways, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of hurdles that the technology will have to overcome. One of them is the maintenance of the hardware systems that tell the self-driving truck where everything is. Kodiak Robotics, a startup trying to be the first to get fully autonomous trucks on the road, has come up with a way to make maintaining hardware easier. It is such a basic solution, it is absurd nobody thought of it before.
A Change in Perspective
The way things have generally been done up until this point is to have sensors on the top of the truck cab to detect oncoming items such as stop signs, traffic lights, and other vehicles. Now, Kodiak Robotics wants to have art imitate life, and is moving these sensors to the front of the windshield, making the sensors almost analogous to the eyes of a human driver.
“By removing the sensors from the top of the truck and incorporating them at a human driver’s line of sight, we have designed a system for the real world,” Don Burnette, CEO of Kodiak Robotics, said on the change. “Additionally, having sensors on top of the cab is actually very difficult to service while on the road and requires specialized equipment, which is nearly impossible to find roadside.”
Conclusion
This might seem like an insignificant story at first glance, but it exemplifies to what extent precautions are being taken by technology companies to make the self-driving trucks of the future better, whether that is in navigation, maintenance, or any other metric. If this news about moving sensors from the top of a truck onto its windshield does not drive the point home of just how far we have to come before autonomous trucking is fully realized, almost nothing will.
With hundreds of obstacles from dozens of facets of designing the truck of the future, it will likely be numerous decades before the human truck driver is fully removed from the equation. As such, the career of a trucker is still ever important to keep the economy running.
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