Forterra, a supplier of autonomous driving technology for military and commercial vehicles, today announced that it has closed a $75 million Series B investment.

The startup says that it secured more than two and a half times the sum it had originally set out to raise. Moore Strategic Ventures, XYZ Venture Capital and Hedosophia led the round. They were joined by multiple returning backers.

Forterra, officially Robotic Research OpCo LLC, sells a hardware module called AutoDrive that can be installed in vehicles to equip them with autonomous driving features. The device includes so-called perception components that allow it to map out its environment. AutoDrive also ships with onboard software that turns the collected environmental data into driving decisions.

The company says that vehicles equipped with its hardware can navigate not only roads but also unpaved, rugged environments. The platform is capable of operating under a range of unfavorable driving conditions. It can travel along paths with low visibility, bad weather and no lane markings or GPS access to assist with navigation. 

Off-road environments often contain obstacles that can create collision risks. Forterra says that AutoDrive can detect and avoid such obstacles automatically. If the system encounters a particularly complicated driving situation that it can’t tackle on its own, customers may use a software tool called TerraLink to manage it remotely.

AutoDrive’s feature set also includes a so-called capability. It allows multiple autonomous vehicles to travel one after another at the same speed. This arrangement reduces air drag on the rear vehicles and thereby enables them to travel using less electricity or fuel than would otherwise be required.

Forterra says its technology is the most widely deployed autonomous driving system in the defense sector. It has teamed up with Oshkosh Corp., a major maker of military trucks, to develop autonomous vehicles for the U.S. Defense Department. It’s also working with defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. to develop a partly autonomous, eight-wheel equipment transportation vehicle. 

The company sees applications for its technology in the private sector as well. It says customers can integrate AutoDrive into vehicles designed to operate at locations such as ports and merchandise distribution centers. Such environments often require the kind of off-road driving support that Forterra has built into its system.  

A few months before today’s funding announcement, Forterra teamed up with automaker Kalmar USA Inc. to develop a line of autonomous yard trucks. Those are specialized trucks designed to move merchandise from one section of a logistics hub to another. They can, for example, transport goods from the parking lot where semi-trailers drop off their cargo to the doors of a warehouse. 

Forterra will use the capital to broaden the adoption of its technology in the defense and industrial sectors. 

Image: Forterra