Exclusive: Rune Rolls Out Autonomous Vehicle Logistics Kit

By now (unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years), you’re probably well aware that the US military is going all-in on autonomous vehicles. And if you read Tectonic, you’ll know that there are a whole lot of companies making them. When those many thousands of autonomous vehicles are fielded, each with its own operating system, one of the biggest challenges will be managing the logistics for them to function as a coordinated fleet. Luckily, Rune thinks it has the answer. This morning, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, the logistics and sustainment software startup unveiled its Autonomy Development Kit (ADK), designed to collate all of the logistics for autonomous vehicles—from vehicle telemetry data like fuel or battery level, faults, and readiness, to vehicle class, cargo capacity, and demand—and optimize their operability through its flagship TyrOS logistics AI platform. “All of these autonomy providers have made incredible autonomous systems, and some of them are quite frankly mind-blowing,” Rune’s Head of Growth, Kyle Haire, told Tectonic. “What they have not built is the sustainment orchestration layer to tie them all together to operate as a holistic system.” Doing the dirty work: By getting all of that info into an AI platform that can already handle and process logistics and sustainment for a wide range of mission sets, Rune’s goal with the ADK is to make the burden of managing and tasking autonomous vehicles as unmanned as the systems themselves. One size fits all: The ADK is built into Rune’s TyrOS platform, which aims to help logisticians and users get critical kit—gear, fuel, food, and parts—where it needs to be more efficiently by using AI and a whole bunch of data to preemptively predict future needs and allocate resources accordingly. The ADK is the “natural progression” of TyrOS, making it “the sustainment orchestration layer that everybody should tie into,” Haire said. Here’s how it works: Partner up: Rune’s work as the logistics and sustainment layer on both Army Next-Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototyping teams and the Marine Corps’ Project Dynamis C2 modernization initiative makes, in Rune’s telling, plugging into the ADK almost a necessity for vehicle providers working on those efforts. According to Haire, Rune’s ADK has been integrated with a maritime autonomy partner, tested with the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, and is set to be integrated into Rune’s work on the NGC2 exercises with the Army and the Marines’ Project Dynamis. Like Palantir’s Maven, “when a platform becomes the way work gets coordinated, the companies that plug into it earlier come out ahead,” Goldsborough said. “We expect the same pattern to play out for TyrOS in logistics autonomy.” “The platforms are fielded. TyrOS is fielded. The ADK is in the market,” he added. “The work ahead is bringing more of the autonomous fleet under one orchestration layer.”