Autonomous truck software developer Kodiak Robotics beat out 31 competitors to win a two-year $49.9 million defense contract to apply its autonomous software to the Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle program.
Kodiak doesn’t have to invent anything exclusive for military use. It is applying its software and hardware it is already using.
“They wanted to find a software provider to take the commercial application and apply it to military use as opposed to a complete black box, which is traditionally how it’s been done,” Kodiak CEO Don Burnette told FreightWaves. “They want technology that evolves with the commercial product.”
The Defense Innovation Unit and the Army want to prototype software and adapt driverless vehicle technology for use in reconnaissance and other challenging military environments.
Kodiak operating in the wild
The first year of the program began in October. Kodiak is applying its autonomous software stack for Army-specific use cases, including future Army vehicles. In year two, the company will implement its autonomous driving system on off-road vehicles. They will be capable of covering complex terrain and operating remotely in unpredictable and austere conditions.
The Ground Vehicle Autonomous Pathways project will fuse data from multiple sensors and allow for teleoperations of unmanned ground vehicles. Applied Intuition also received a contract to work on simulation where Kodiak focuses on physical testing.
“One of the challenges they’ve always had is the inability to fall back, mixing human and autonomous operation in a single system and platform,” Burnette said.
Like it does in with its Class 8 autonomous trucks, Kodiak will use safety drivers in the first phase of its work.
Army helping Kodiak’s bottom line
“It’s a great synergistic program, and that’s how we’re thinking about it,” Burnette said. “Our technology was developed for over-the-road trucking. But it generalizes to a lot of other areas. We feel the technology we’ve developed for the commercial application is very applicable to government applications.”
And it helps Kodiak’s bottom line. The startup co-founded by Burnette in 2018 eschewed going public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). That avoids Wall Street pressure for improving results. Many young public companies are desperate for funds with stock prices in the low single digits.
Larger business potential
The military work is Kodiak’s second such project. It completed a 15-month Small Business Innovation Research contract with the U.S. Air Force to help develop autonomous vehicles for flight-line operations. Kodiak passed on continuing that effort because it was “looking for something a little bit more substantial from a financial contract perspective.”
The Army contract will lead to more jobs at Kodiak, which has more than doubled employment to about 180 since its $125 million Series B round led by Pilot Co. in November 2021. Pilot is developing an autonomous trucking hub in Atlanta that it may expand to its network of truck stops and travel plazas.
“For us, this is the start of a development program we would like to see into the future and build this into a larger business,” Burnette said.
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