Self-driving robots delivering your food. Will it be our new reality?

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Not from today we hear about self-driving cars, selfless taxies or robots taking over human jobs. The idea of delivery without human participation is nothing new. Through the years were many ways of selfless delivery tested e.g., in 2007, a self-driving Ford Fusion served pizza to random Ann Arbor, Michigan residents also in 2013, a delivery using drones was tested in the United Kingdom. Any of these examples encourages the mind and helps you to envision the future.

Only a few days ago the new proposition of delivery without human participation has been introduced by Dominos, which is partnering with Nuro, a self- driving delivery startup. The restaurant chain announced on Monday that a Nuro-built self-driving robot would begin delivering pizzas in Houston this week as part of a pilot program.

In February, the US Department of Transportation certified the Nuro R2 as the first driverless car, granting it a special exemption from federal safety standards. Nuro, founded in 2018 by two ex-Google engineers, partnered with Domino’s in 2019 for a pilot pizza delivery service in Houston, which is now being phased out. In Houston, Nuro vehicles are now used for food distribution and CVS Pharmacy delivery. The company revealed in April that it would use its cars to move medical supplies across two California stadiums that had been turned into COVID-19 care facilities.

How it works?

“The R2 features 360° cameras, as well as Lidar, short and long-range radar, and ultrasonic sensors. We combine that advanced hardware with a robust autonomy stack that includes mapping, localization, perception, and prediction.”
nuro.ai

Customers can choose between conventional delivery and delivery by a fully autonomous vehicle manufactured by Nuro. The pizza delivery process will be as follows: the customer places and pays for an online order from the Woodland Heights store and chooses to have the order shipped by R. As they wait for the pizza, they receive text messages with details about the robot’s current location and the PIN code required to pick up the order. When the car arrives, the customer types the number into the touchscreen. The door is then opened and client is given hot food.

This research will look at how users cope with such deliveries, how they communicate with machines, and how this impacts distribution point operations. After billions of dollars have been invested in it, the robot will undoubtedly succeed. However, different legal regulations in force in individual countries and cities must be taken into account. The future is said to be in self-driving cars and self-supply of different goods. Nevertheless, there is a long road before this solution will be introduced globally.