The Swedish furniture and decoration giant, IKEA, recently announced a strategic alliance with Kodiak Robotics, a company based in Mountain View, California, to carry out a pilot plan of autonomous supply chain. Texas is the hotbed for this intrepid plan, which is designed to make more efficient the cargo transportation for IKEA.
The cooperation officially began on August 8, 2022, and it started with one autonomous Kodiak heavy truck that transports IKEA products seven days a week between the IKEA Distribution Center, in Baytown, and the IKEA store in Frisco, a city located 28 miles (45 km) north from Dallas.
The exercise they are doing for IKEA is not something new: Kodiak has been testing its driverless trucks since 2019 in Texas, and recently opened a cargo transportation route between Dallas and Oklahoma City. Kodiak has also conducted pilot tests with logistics giants Werner Enterprises and US Xpress, operating autonomous trucks on routes from Dallas to Lake City, Florida and Atlanta, respectively.
Driverless delivery IKEA
“We are proud to be working with Kodiak to achieve our ambitious goals of being at the forefront of innovation and building capabilities for future transportation,” said Dariusz Mroczek, Category Area Transport Manager, IKEA Supply Chain Operations.
“Kodiak’s technology will contribute towards our objective to put the driver in focus in the transition towards automated transportation and towards our road safety agenda,” he added.
Don Burnette, Founder and CEO, Kodiak Robotics, said that “IKEA and Kodiak share a commitment to putting safety first”. “Together we can enhance safety, improve working conditions for drivers, and create a more sustainable freight transportation system. Adopting autonomous trucking technology can improve drivers’ quality of life by focusing on the local driving jobs most prefer to do. We look forward to working with the IKEA carrier partners to bring these benefits to the IKEA supply chain.”
But don’t worry! The truck doesn’t go completely alone: it always has a driver in the seat in front of the steering wheel, who can react – and is trained for – if necessary.
Kodiak says its trucks are some of the most advanced autonomous cargo vehicles in the industry, and they have their own driving system called “Kodiak Vision”. It works with a combination of LIDAR and RADAR cameras that the truck’s computer can use to generate a deep understanding of the surrounding road, and what is moving on it.