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Two grocery stores in the fast-growing city of Houston, Texas, will receive a new robot delivery service courtesy of Nuro, the self-driving startup founded by two Google engineers. The service is an extension of Nuro's partnership with food giant Kroger, which debuted last year in Scottsdale, Arizona.
In the beginning, the races will be delivered via Nuro's fleet of autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles, and each car will be driven by a security driver. However, the company plans to roll out this year its custom R1 driverless delivery vehicles, which are currently being used to do grocery shopping in Arizona. (The old autonomous heads will recognize a resemblance to the original "Firefly" prototypes that Google removed in 2017.)
The experience only concerns two Kroger stores and customers can place orders via Kroger.com or on the mobile app. Grocery orders can be scheduled for delivery the same day or the next day. Delivery charges are $ 5.95 per order and there is no minimum order amount.
The news comes on the heels of an investment of nearly a billion dollars in Nuro from the Japanese technology company SoftBank. It was a huge vote of confidence for one of the lesser known startups working on self-driving technology. Formed in 2016 by two Google engineers, Nuro is distinguished by focusing on food delivery rather than on moving people.
Nuro is one of the few companies to use driverless vehicles on public roads today. Its R1 vehicle is about twice as wide as a compact sedan, shorter than most cars and leaves no room for passengers or drivers inside. Until now, Nuro has built six of these vehicles and plans to use this infusion to make more. He also plans to increase his fleet of standard cars equipped with software and standalone hardware to approximately 50 vehicles, which he will drive on public roads in California, Arizona and Texas with safety drivers. driving.
The R1 may not have room for a human driver, but the vehicles are not completely unsupervised. Nuro uses tracking vehicles with human drivers and remote technology to monitor each driverless vehicle during deliveries.
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