Kodiak Partners With Vay For Remote Controlling Trucks

Kodiak, a manufacturer of self-driving technology for trucks based in Mountain View, is partnering with Vay from Berlin, which allows vehicles to be operated remotely.

In so-called Vay Stations, a human driver operates the vehicle via the Internet and controls it under certain circumstances. The press release states the following:

Kodiak currently utilizes Vay’s technology to provide Assisted Autonomy support when needed to Kodiak Driver-powered trucks, which are operating fully driverlessly in the Permian Basin of 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 and other low-speed driving scenarios, such as interpreting law enforcement hand signals.

With more and more driverless vehicles on (public) roads, the authorities also require means to provide vehicles with assistance from an operations center in special circumstances. A distinction is made between tele-assistance and tele-operation. With tele-assistance, an employee from the control center can dial into the vehicle, record the status using sensors and then give the vehicle text instructions to maneuver it. With tele-operation, an employee takes control of the vehicle and sits in a driving station with all the control elements, just like in a vehicle. See also the picture as Voyage had it.

With this combination, autonomous vehicles can be put on the road much more quickly and all situations in which an employee had to intervene can be gradually recorded and taught to the system.

This article was also published in German.