I joined Kodiak to work on self-driving trucks!

I’m so excited to be here 😊 🚛 Last week was my start, and I’m already riding along in the truck and kicking off projects on new and exciting problems.

Kodiak has quietly been building an impressive operation tackling middle mile freight transportation, one of the biggest and most conducive markets for autonomy.

My team covers planning, controls, and simulation, and they’ve been building impressively!

I’m enjoying observing the similarities and differences between self-driving trucks and self-driving cars. At a high level, the planning, controls, and simulation tasks are quite similar across industries, but the details create distinctions.

For example, Kodiak trucks operate primarily on controlled-access highways, which makes lane boundaries more salient and reduces some of the complexity inherent in urban driving.

On the other hand, Kodiak trucks travel at highway speeds, much faster than self-driving cars in urban environments. This changes the time and distance horizons for the entire autonomy stack – perception, prediction, planning, and controls.

I’ll write more about the work here in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Kodiak has a great blog with insights about our latest projects.

Lastly, Kodiak is hiring like crazy! We should hire you! Work on self-driving trucks with me.

Send me an email right now to d.silver@kodiak.ai with “Work At Kodiak” in the subject line. I will find a job for you!

Last Friday was my final day at Cruise. I will miss it!

I joined Cruise in March, 2021, as part of the acquisition of Voyage. In 14 months at Cruise, I learned so much and saw so much growth. It was a really special time.

Most of all, the performance of Cruise AVs astounds me. I drove rode in fully driverless Cruise AVs half-a-dozen times since the beginning of the year, across huge swaths of San Francisco. They drive so, so well. And the experience of having the car entirely to myself, without having to worry about driving, is amazing.

My team at Cruise is terrific, and they are hiring! I can’t recommend them enough. Jason is a great manager.

I am so grateful for everything and everyone I had the privilege of working with over the past year. Truly a world-class engineering team.