In the pouring rain, the self-driving hardware delivery service begins

A little rain did not stop ThorDrive, an autonomous car platform based in Seoul, from launching its autonomous delivery service.

Beginning on Thursday, driverless vans will purchase their purchases at a Silicon Valley hardware store. No driving, acceleration or braking will be necessary.

On Thursday, in a pouring rain, a small Ford pickup truck bearing the ThorDrive brand and four LiDAR Velodyne sensors that measure the distance between objects, sensors and cameras drove passengers into downtown Palo Alto, in the heart of the city. Silicon Valley.

Image: sasha lekach / mashable

A driver and safety operator sitting in the front seat informed the drivers of what was doing and why the car was doing what it was doing. But after the launch of Thursday, ThorDrive will no longer have to deal with annoying humans who ask questions and judge how the car stops or slows down. .

The focus will be on the orders of the Ace Hardware hardware store chain, starting with the Hassett Hardware store in Palo Alto and some of its big customers, such as the local fire department and the retired community of Channing House.

The pilot project will be free next month and the service plans to expand in 2019. The company is tentatively considering creating a separate delivery application for the vans to allow them to file their orders independently. Prices have not been set yet, but the hardware store currently does not offer any delivery service. With this in mind, the new delivery method must be taken into account in the company.

Farshid Arman, ThorDrive's operations manager, said at the launching ceremony that even though the vans only delivered barbecue supplies or mulch and gardening equipment, "we must always be safe". Even if there are no passengers inside the vehicle, self-contained vans must monitor pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and other vehicles on the road.

Velodyne President Mike Jellen and Palo Alto Deputy Mayor Eric Filseth were at the back of the van. Like me, they were impressed by the van's ability to navigate in less than ideal driving conditions with continuous rains, large puddles of water, debris scattered in the streets and pedestrians with umbrellas trying to get out of the rain.

As Jellen has pointed out, rain does not pose a lot of problems because of the use of LiDAR instead of cameras. The light could still be emitted by the apparatus and the rain did not obstruct the sight of the objects.

Image: sasha lekach / mashable

At one point, the driver had to intervene when, in a narrow two-way street, a car was parked in duplicate and ended up attempting to return to an open space at the corner of the intersection. The human driver in the car in front of us had problems with the scenario, so it was not so embarrassing for the ThorDrive driver to overtake the automated system and move the car, but he showed his limitations.

Autonomous driving skills are fairly rudimentary at this stage – they can not yet save or park themselves – but they come very close to stop signs, left turns, pedestrian crossings, and other ordinary driving situations. She was almost as well safely, crossing intersections cautiously and stopping completely. At one point, a light turned yellow and instead of accelerating, the van stopped, which was the right call, but not what others would do.

Filseth told the founder of ThorDrive Seung-Woo Seo after the ride that the ride was "pretty impressive" and that the car was mitigating a "blizzard of complicated situations".

ThorDrive follows a trend of other automakers and autonomous vehicle companies: transporting things rather than people. Unlike Waymo and GM's Cruise with their taxi service goals, it's easier to launch a delivery service. Several grocery delivery programs have started this year. Walmart and Ford announced earlier this month that you can order Walmart products delivered in a stand-alone Ford vehicle in the Miami area. Nuro and Kroger have also recently partnered for a food distribution program, while AutoX also offers independent delivery in Silicon Valley from GrubMarket's online grocer.

Ford says it will have an autonomous car service by 2021, but in the meantime, it is working on standalone deliveries. Before the partnership with Walmart, Ford was placing orders for Domino pizzas. Instead of driving people, delivery services are an easier way to show proof of concept for self-driving.

The ThorDrive COO stated that ThorDrive did not use delivery as a starting point for a passenger service. The company intends to remain in the commercial logistics sector because of what it sees as a "larger market than [driving] people "and a growing demand for a last mile solution to get online orders from people.

In Korea, the company is considering a possible self-contained shuttle that can carry passengers – another more predictable and less risky way to test and refine autonomous driving systems.