Kodiak Robotics Declares Gen 5 Autonomous Truck – Tools
Kodiak’s fifth era truck (Gen5) has mirror-mounted SensorPods that eradicate the necessity for hard-to-maintain roof-mounted {hardware}.
Photograph: Kodiak
Kodiak Robotics launched its fifth-generation autonomous truck {hardware} platform with elevated sensor redundancy and processing energy.
The newest iteration removes the roof-mounted “middle pod” sensor suite, relocating the front-facing Luminar Iris Lidar and huge field-of-view digital camera to every of its mirror-mounted SensorPods. By integrating sensors into the SensorPods, Kodiak says Lidar protection is doubled at lengthy vary. With sensors situated in an easy-to-reach location on the mirrors, drivers and technicians can keep away from having to entry the roof to keep up sensors.
Kodiak’s SensorPods are additionally designed to position sensors on the identical top as a driver, maximizing highway security and enhancing notion. The SensorPods provide a greater twin vantage level, in response to the corporate, as they supply redundancy and visibility on both aspect of the truck, versus the one vantage level above the cab. Within the occasion of sensor injury, dual-redundant front-facing sensors will increase resiliency.
As well as, an on-the-fly alternative of SensorPods, that are appropriate with any truck platform, could be carried out in about 10 minutes, in response to Kodiak. The broken SensorPod can then be returned to Kodiak for analysis and restore.
“By eradicating the sensors from the highest of the truck and incorporating them at a human driver’s line of sight, we’ve designed a system for the actual world,” mentioned Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak Robotics, in an announcement. “Moreover, having sensors on high of the cab is definitely very troublesome to service whereas on the highway and requires specialised gear, which is almost inconceivable to search out roadside.”
Like Kodiak’s fourth-generation truck, Kodiak’s fifth-generation truck consists of Cummins X15 Sequence engines and Bridgestone’s smart-sensing tire know-how.
A Extra Sturdy Sensor Array
The fifth-generation Kodiak truck improves upon the sensor array introduced as a part of its prior-generation platform. When eradicating the middle pod, the corporate added a second forward-facing Lidar and extra digital camera so as to add redundancy within the left and proper SensorPods. The brand new truck will increase the full variety of sensors on-board from 14 to 18, together with one new Lidar and three new cameras — bringing the full digital camera rely to 10. Two wide-angle cameras have been added to the hood-mounted mirrors to cowl blind spots.
Kodiak’s long-range sensor suite consists of the next, cut up evenly between the 2 side-mounted mirror SensorPods:
- 4 ZF Full Vary Radar for redundancy
- Two Hesai 360-degree scanning Lidars for side- and rear-view detection
- Two Luminar Iris Lidar sensors
- Eight cameras, which embody each huge and slender field-of-views.
The brand new truck consists of the just lately introduced Ambarella CV2 notion system-on-chip (SoC) which handles all digital camera information processing. The Ambarella CV2 SoC improves picture high quality for longer vary detections and unlocks improved dynamic vary for nighttime driving.
Improved {Hardware} Stack for Higher Efficiency
Kodiak’s {hardware} stack is designed for 3 actions:
- Sensing, via its SensorPods.
- Considering, via its primary laptop.
- Appearing, which is managed via two onboard custom-designed security computer systems, the Kodiak Actuation Management Engine, or ACE.
Kodiak additionally decreased {the electrical} energy necessities for its fifth-generation truck, whereas enhancing the processing energy of the system. Along with 130% extra GPU processing energy, the brand new system gives 60% extra central processing energy, and extra system redundancy. The decreased energy consumption allowed for a 50% discount within the dimension of the fifth-generation energy system, and likewise decreased cooling wants.
The corporate can be taking a modular strategy to constructing its computing system with a consolidated its in-house compute system, networking, and energy distribution into one bodily unit, giving extra choices for integration. The pc {hardware} is manufactured by Crystal Group, a producer of navy and ruggedized computer systems, and is designed to deal with the heavy and chronic vibrations onboard long-haul vehicles.
