From highway to flight line, Kodiak Robotics finds familiar ground

Navigating interstates should be a straightforward task for self-driving systems. Traffic flows in one direction. Speeds are consistent. Pedestrians are rare sights.

Airfields, it turns out, are remarkably similar places.

"They're very structured environments," said Andreas Wendel, vice president of engineering at self-driving truck company Kodiak Robotics. "There's no people running around. It fits in very well with what you can automate on a highway, and [you can] transport goods that are heading to and from a plane."

That's what Kodiak Robotics intends to do as part of a new contract with the U.S. Air Force. The Mountain View, Calif., startup is developing self-driving technology for vehicles on the flight line at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Home to the 436th Aerial Port Squadron, Dover is a critical military hub for cargo destined for worldwide locations.

After Kodiak showcased the technology in simulation, the company and the Air Force agreed in April on a 15-month contract, during which both will explore the use of automated vehicles on the base. They're not specifying which vehicles will be outfitted with self-driving systems, but they envision moving both people and goods around the airfield.

"You have a couple of highways and exits on those highways and a starting point," Wendel said. "The flight line is very similar."

Other companies are working on comparable deployments in the civilian world. In 2020, officials at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport partnered with South Korean autonomous vehicle company ThorDrive to introduce AVs in the airport environment. Likewise, self-driving operator EasyMile started testing automated baggage carts at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam in February.

At the end of its contract with the Air Force, Kodiak would be eligible to embark upon a third phase of the project, funded by the federal government's Small Business Innovation Research program. The third phase would entail developing and deploying vehicles at a broader scale. But right now, Wendel says the company is concentrating on how it can best support Dover's operations.

"What I like about this is we're working directly with the lieutenant and major to see what the best use cases are," Wendel said. "We're looking at this as a win-win where we can say, 'This is what's most useful.' It's a very symbiotic relationship."

More so than vehicular specifics, automating the driving task is what stoked the Air Force's interest, said Dan Goff, Kodiak's head of policy. Just as a driver shortage has proliferated throughout the civilian trucking industry — the American Trucking Associations puts it at 50,000 — similar constraints have complicated operations at Dover.

"Finding drivers is difficult across every industry, and it's a similar conversation talking to Dover about this," Goff said. "Finding people to drive is not as easy as you think, and in their case, if you can't find a driver right away, that can be an operational problem."

Beyond the burgeoning work with the Air Force, Kodiak has been focused on testing its big rigs on interstates in Texas. In January, its trucks completed two round trips between Dallas and Houston without a disengagement, traveling 829 consecutive miles under autonomous-only control.

Kodiak says the military project does not represent a detour from its core business of hauling goods on interstates. Wendel says it's only because the environments are so similar and have complementary use cases that Kodiak wanted to embark upon the project.

"It's a great way to phase in the end-to-end driving that we eventually want to have," Wendel said. "We still have a very phased approach with highways, and we can then do other things that go around it. That helps us build our system."