Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - August 2023 - 15

AUTONOMOUS FEATURE
Michael
Wiesinger, VP of
commercialization
for Kodiak
Robotics, at the
2023 ACT Expo.
" It is the first-ever autonomous
electric truck, not only for
Kodiak but for the industry. "
The fifth-generation platform replaces the roof-mounted " center
pod " sensor suite with proprietary mirror-mounted SensorPods
on each side of the truck.
Enhanced perception capability is another benefit;
the sensors are placed at a human driver's line of
sight. The new location reportedly doubles the Kodiak
Driver's lidar coverage at long range. It also simplifies
the build process, Weisinger said.
The latest-generation Kodiak Driver adds a second
forward-facing lidar and additional camera compared
to the previous center-pod setup. " Before, we had
sensors in the middle [of the vehicle] - now we have
them left and right, so there's additional redundancy
from a sensor perspective, " Wiesinger said. " When we
designed the SensorPods, we did a field-of-view analysis
specific for the long-haul-trucking use case and
have identified the best setup. "
Fewer required modifications and touch points enable
more cost-effective integration into trucks, which
marks a significant step toward commercial deployment
of the Kodiak Driver, he said.
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
" In the future, if you think about potentially moving to an [camerabased]
e-mirror - a concept that some truck manufacturers are exploring
- then we can take away the glass [mirror] and make the
SensorPod smaller, " Wiesinger said. " We already have thoughts and
designs of what that next generation could look like. "
Robust sensor array
The fifth-generation Kodiak Driver platform as demonstrated on the
Kenworth T680 increases the total number of onboard sensors from 14
to 18, including one new lidar and three new cameras - bringing the
total camera count to 10. Two wide-angle cameras (not shown on the
579EV) were added to the hood-mounted mirrors to cover blind spots.
Kodiak's long-range sensor suite includes the following, split evenly
between the two side-mounted SensorPods: four ZF Full Range
Radars; two Hesai 360-degree scanning lidars for side- and rear-view
detection; two Luminar Iris lidar sensors; and eight cameras that include
both wide and narrow fields-of-view. The new application also
features the recently-released Ambarella CV2 perception system-onchip
(SoC) that handles all camera data processing. The Ambarella
CV2 SoC is said to improve image quality for longer-range detections
and enhance dynamic range for nighttime driving.
" We are providing the trucking industry with the processors it requires
to commercialize higher levels of autonomy, " Fermi Wang,
president and CEO of Ambarella, said in a statement earlier this year.
Continued on page 18
August 2023 15
BOTH IMAGES: SAE/RYAN GEHM
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - August 2023

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