Maersk and Kodiak Robotics launched a new autonomous trucking lane between Houston and Oklahoma City.
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The lane is running four round trips per week using 53-foot trailers. It connects a Houston facility with an Oklahoma City distribution center.
"Teaming with Kodiak enables Maersk to stay at the forefront of innovative solutions," says Erez Agmoni, global head of innovation, logistics and services, for Maersk. "Autonomous trucks will play an instrumental role in digitizing the supply chain. We expect self-driving trucks to ultimately become a competitive advantage for Maersk as we execute on our strategy to provide customers with a sustainable, end-to-end logistics solution across air, land and sea."
Kodiak is using the trips as part of its Kodiak Partner Deployment Program, designed to help companies learn how Kodiak's self-driving trucks can become an integral part of their overall logistics strategy and offerings.
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"Since our founding, we have focused on developing an autonomous product that is easy for global innovation leaders to integrate into their networks, and Maersk is a perfect fit," says Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak. "Hauling commercial freight gives us the opportunity to work together to integrate Kodiak's autonomous trucking solution into Maersk's operations. As the first autonomous trucking company to establish this new commercial lane between Houston and Oklahoma City, we are demonstrating our team's ability to introduce new lanes and bring new efficiencies to the entire logistics industry."
Kodiak says each autonomous truck has not only a safety driver on board, but also 18 sensors, including cameras, radar and lidar, that provide the platform with a 360-degree view of the truck. Every tenth of a second, the truck evaluates the performance of more than 1,000 safety-critical processes and components.
