Nuro self-driving van.
There are some limits to this announcement, but if you’re in a “select group” of Walmart shoppers in the Houston metro area and you like the idea of getting your groceries delivered to you via autonomous robots, listen up. Nuro and Walmart announced today they will start an autonomous vehicle delivery service in the coming months and, even better, the two companies promise that this delivery option will be “affordable” but did not give out specifics for what that means.
Nuro, based in Mountain View, California, was founded by engineers who once worked at Google’s self-driving vehicle project in 2016. Nuro has so far raised over a billion dollars from investors like the SoftBank Vision Fund and Greylock for its ambitious plans to get as many deliveries as possible out of human hands and into robots.
Nuro has been mapping parts of Houston for its autonomous vehicles for months now, according to the Washington Post, as it has been testing its grocery delivery program. That work was being done with Toyota Priuses, which will continue, but today’s announcement is about a new phase that will introduce the company’s custom-built vehicle, known as the R2, to the mix. The R2 driverless van can hold around 12 bags of groceries and is designed to travel on public roads, not sidewalks or bike lanes. The R2, which is similar to the earlier R1 model pictured above, has two separate bins that are unlocked using a touchscreen keypad and a code to access their order. The van was designed to look friendly and not put the grocery bags at too high or low a level for customers to take them out when it pulls up to your home.
For now, to participate in the Houston autonomous vehicle (AV) deliveries, customers have to opt in, and even then Nuro is only delivering from a few “select” area Walmart stores. Nuro says it will expand its robot delivery service to the general public later in 2020. Nuro tested AV grocery deliveries at Fry’s stores in Scottsdale, Arizona for nine months starting in 2018 and charged customers $5.95 per delivery. The New York Times says that “thousands” of customers took advantage of the R1’s delivery service. Nuro also announced earlier this year that it will start delivering pizzas with Domino’s in Houston soon.
“By continuing to test autonomous vehicle capabilities, we’re better able to understand the path self-driving technology can take us down the road,” said Tom Ward, Walmart’s SVP of digital operations, in a statement.
