Vay & Kodiak Partner to Develop Assisted Autonomy Technology for Driverless Trucks

Germany's Vay, a provider of remote driving technology, and Kodiak Robotics, a US-based developer of autonomous vehicle technology, have announced a strategic partnership to help enable Kodiak's proprietary Assisted Autonomy technology.  Assisted Autonomy allows a human to remotely control a truck in certain low-speed and clearly-defined scenarios that benefit from human involvement.

Assisted Autonomy is part of the functionality of Kodiak's autonomous solution, the Kodiak Driver.

To help support Assisted Autonomy, Kodiak has deployed Vay Stations, as well as software tools that enable low-latency communications between Vay's Stations and Kodiak Driver-powered vehicles.

This allows the Kodiak Driver to handle a broader range of driving scenarios.

Kodiak currently utilises Vay's technology to provide Assisted Autonomy support when needed to Kodiak Driver-powered trucks, which are operating fully driverlessly in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico.

Additionally, the Kodiak Driver uses Vay's technology to support Assisted Autonomy with long-haul customers for launching and landing trucks at customer facilities.

Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, says: "No matter the maturity of an autonomous driving system, there are still scenarios that will benefit from human assistance, if only as a backup. Assisted Autonomy can be helpful in situations such as interpreting law enforcement hand signals. Rather than recreating the wheel on a remote assistance solution, we have chosen to partner with Vay, in our opinion the industry leader, which we believe will expedite our ability to safely scale."

Thomas von der Ohe, co-founder and CEO of Vay, adds: "Over the last year, Vay has proven the use cases for remote driving—both in B2C and B2B settings. The strategic partnership with Kodiak will expand the B2B use cases to trucks. We are excited to partner with Kodiak to help make trucking and freight delivery safer and more efficient by marrying the value of human decision-making with autonomous operations."

In 2023, Vay became the first company to drive cars without a human driver inside the car on European public roads.

In January 2024, Vay began its commercial services in Las Vegas, Nevada, offering residents and visitors the opportunity to request a remotely delivered rental car.