The autonomous truck developed by Kodiak Robotics contains remote drive DNA courtesy of Vay, an unmanned car sharing startup from Bailin.
The companies, who announced their partnership on Wednesday, have been working together since last year when Kodiak’s self-driving trucks began driverless delivery of Atlas Energy Solutions in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas and eastern New Mexico.
The partnership will play a critical operational and safety role if Kodiak, which plans to be made public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, begins commercial unmanned delivery on Texas public highways in late 2026.
Remote driving, also known as teleoperations, has emerged as a type of bridge technology for autonomous vehicles. This technology is often used to support sidewalk distribution robots, slow autonomous shuttles, and even autonomous forklifts. The rise of Robotaxis has brought new attention to technology, along with speculation about which companies are using it.
Vay’s remote drive technology supports Kodiak’s own autonomous driving system. The two technologies, each with redundant systems and guardrails, allow remote control of Kodiak’s autonomous trucks in certain slower environments.
The German company’s teleopards rig includes steering wheels, screens, vehicle controls and software that allow human drivers to operate the Kodiak trucks using low-latency communication from remote locations.
However, Kodiak’s autonomous driving system, in particular its unique “autonomy support” technology, still maintains control. The underlying autonomous driving system remains active and limits what remote human drivers can do if they start navigating an autonomous truck.
“It’s not a direct system where you turn the steering wheel and turn the truck over,” Kodiak’s CTO Andreas Wendell explained how an autonomous system handles much of the driving. Remote drivers using Vay’s Rig tell the vehicle where to go, but Kodiak’s system still runs all the checks and stays on track.
“Why is that important? Because we drive a variety of different vehicles, from big cicadas to F-150s to military vehicles. They have different loads and sometimes they have full trailers. Sometimes they have empty trailers. Sometimes there are no trailers.
Kodiak operates autonomous trucks in slow scenarios, with all employees commercial driver licenses and rigorously trained, using Vay’s System to run autonomous trucks in slower scenarios, including whether they encounter complex construction zones where law enforcement has created hand signals.
Wendell said TechCrunch Kodiak began investigating remote driving technology when he was awarded a contract from the US Army in 2022.
“They come across a lot of use cases, where they just can’t rely on the autonomy to do that,” he says, explaining that a driverless military vehicle may suddenly change course and need to hide behind a brush. “It’s very difficult to get your autonomy to actually understand,” he said.
Kodiak began building his own remote drive technology, but then found Vay, who had already deployed the system in the real world.
This partnership is Vay’s latest victory, making teleopalization technology the heart of the automotive sharing business. The startup started as a driverless car sharing company that developed remote drive technology to allow employees sitting in office pilots to open empty vehicles to customers.
When the free vehicle arrives, the customer takes over manual control of the vehicle. The customer drives to the destination and the teleops driver pilots the vehicle when the customer finishes. Founded in 2019, Vay has recorded over 10,000 commercial trips.
The company’s co-founder and CEO Thomas von Der Ohe sees Vay go beyond consumer services. Last September, the company began expanding into commercial and inter-business services.
“I often explain a bit of it like how Amazon built AWS behind Amazon’s success,” he said. “This is how we want to build that global remote driving platform.”
Kodiak founder and CEO Don Burnette said the branded “Assisted Autonomy” system will allow customers to deliver more flexibility in cargo in more locations and scenarios.
“There are still scenarios where you can benefit from human aid only as a backup regardless of the maturity of your autonomous driving system,” he said.
