Lunch And Learn: Computer Chips
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
At Kodiak we have a weekly, optional meeting called Lunch & Learn, where somebody in the company talks about something they know well. Usually the topic is related to, but not strictly a part of, Kodiak and autonomous trucking. And, usually, the format is for the session leader to play a video and add some comments. That’s a lot easier than coming up with an hour-long lecture from scratch. This week, we learned about silicon chips, including why chips have been in short supply in automotive industry. We watched a sequence of videos, including this video by TechAltar: “Why making ..read more
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Mobileye IPOs
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
Mobileye is now a public company, under the symbol MBLY. Perhaps the high water mark of autonomous vehicle funding was Intel’s $15 billion acquisition of Mobileye in 2017. Other transactions were more speculative, like GM’s $600 million acquisition of Cruise, or Uber’s comparable acquisition of Otto, or Ford’s investment in Argo, or Waymo’s multiple outside funding rounds with valuations in the billions and then tens of billions of dollars. But no single transaction was as big as the Intel acquisition. That one might be bigger than all the other transactions combined. Five years lat ..read more
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Aurora Horizon
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
Aurora has a great blog post up about their upcoming Aurora Horizon service, which will operate with their upcoming self-driving trucks. In particular, the post features a great graphic describing “the middle mile” of autonomous trucking. “…our customers will drop off and pick up their trailers at our terminals, which are positioned at major freight hubs along our launch lanes, and the Aurora Driver will take care of the long hauls.” The blog post further describes the inspections and documentation that are required before and after the journey. At the end, Aurora mentions the long-term ..read more
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Waymo Heading To Los Angeles
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
Waymo posted on their blog today that they’ll be opening a self-driving service in Los Angeles. We’ve gotten to know many LA neighborhoods, including Downtown and Miracle Mile, Koreatown, Santa Monica, Westwood and West Hollywood, and we’ll begin driving autonomously in several central districts over the coming months as we prepare to serve Angelenos. The language hedges somewhat — “begin driving autonomously…over the coming months” leaves a lot of ambiguity about how far along this is and to what extent the rides will be monitored by safety operators, versus fully driverless. The blog p ..read more
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Sunny With A Chance Of Self-Driving Swedish Meatballs
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
Kodiak just signed a deal to haul freight for IKEA in our self-driving trucks! At Forbes, Ed Garsten has a great article situating this latest news in the context of Kodiak’s ever-expanding commercial business, hauling freight coast-to-coast. Kodiak has been on a roll. One of the overlooked aspects of a big win like this is just how much it says about Kodiak’s ability to work with large multinational corporations. Companies like IKEA take their responsibilities to stakeholders — workers, communities, vendors — seriously. These companies typically have a deep set of partner requirements t ..read more
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The Cruise Origin Is (Maybe?) On The Road!
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
You may see it in San Francisco! Our purpose-built AV, the Origin, is on track for production! While we eagerly await its arrival for commercial use in the coming months, you may see a human-operated Origin prototype driving on the streets of SF. ? cruise on Twitter: "Our purpose-built AV, the Origin, is on track for production! While we eagerly await its arrival for commercial use in the coming months, you may see a human-operated Origin prototype driving on the streets of SF. ? / Twitter" Our purpose-built AV, the Origin, is on track for production! While we eagerly await its arrival f ..read more
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Battery Tech Talk From Lucid’s Peter Rawlinson
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
I just watched this terrific tech talk from Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson. He does a great job explaining both the basics of electric vehicle battery packs and also some of the tricks Lucid has turned in order to push the technology forward. Rawlinson incorporates just enough basic physics to ground the explanations in reality. I really appreciated that he took time to explain different approaches to battery pack configuration, what the trade-offs were between approaches, and why Lucid took the approach they did. Before joining Lucid in 2013, Rawlinson was the Vehicle Engineer on the ..read more
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Kodiak News
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
Kodiak Partners with Werner. The latest in a series of partnerships Kodiak has signed to haul freight for major industry shippers. CEO Don Burnette in the New York Times. Don discusses where Kodiak is on the road to autonomy, and why trucking is such a good domain for driverless automation. CTO Andreas Wendel on Austrian TV. In German, so I had to turn on YouTube’s auto-translated captions, which worked well. An interesting window onto how the world outside of Silicon Valley, and even the US, thinks about driverless technology. GNSS (GPS) as part of Kodiak’s localization stack. Unlike urban s ..read more
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RIP Amazon Scout
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
Bloomberg reports the demise of Amazon Scout, the delightfully-shaped last-mile sidewalk delivery robot. Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll said the Scout team was being disbanded and would be offered new jobs in the organization. About 400 people were working on the project globally, according to the person, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. A skeleton crew will continue to consider the idea of an autonomous robot, but the current iteration isn’t working. 400 people is a pretty huge project — well beyond Amazon’s famous “two pizza” rule. That also raises the quest ..read more
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Pilot Flying J Partners With Kodiak
Medium » Self Driving Car
by David Silver
1y ago
Pilot Flying J, which operates Pilot, Flying J, and Mr. Fuel truck centers, just announced an investment in Kodiak! As a strategic investor, Pilot Flying J bring a lot of benefits. In addition to financial backing, the company will join Kodiak’s board of directors. We’ll also open an autonomous truckport near Atlanta, Georgia, to progress toward Kodiak’s goal of automating the “middle mile.” Middle mile automation means hauling loads autonomously over the long distances between the “first mile” and the “last mile”. These points, at either end of a journey, involve complex urban driv ..read more
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