The vehicles used in this program were provided by Kodiak Robotics, a startup that has been developing autonomous driving technology since 2019.
There are human operators on board the trucks who can take over in an emergency, but for the most part, the deliveries are autonomous.
The robotic semi-truck makes daily deliveries between an IKEA warehouse near Houston and a store in the suburbs of Dallas. According to Kodiak CEO Don Burnett, his company does not want to put drivers out of work but simply wants to make life easier for them.
Texas has become a hotbed for self-driving truck testing, in part because of favorable regulations and also because the long highway stretches between its cities are ideal for automation.