[msb-alumni] Kroger Steps into Driverless Food Delivery in Arizona
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2018 14:53:55 -0500
BlankKroger Steps into Driverless Food Delivery in Arizona
The nation's largest grocery chain stepped into the driverless delivery market
Tuesday, bringing milk, eggs and other items to a customer's home in a vehicle
with nobody at the wheel. Although limited to delivering within about a mile of
one Arizona supermarket owned by Kroger Co., it represents the latest step
for industries trying to lower delivery costs of everyday items and those
trying
to launch self-driving cars on public roads. Tuesday's delivery arrived
at Shannon Baggett's house in the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale. She was already
receiving groceries weekly from larger, manned self-driving vehicles that
the company Nuro developed and launched in August. She said it was surreal to
see nobody in the car bringing her milk, eggs and strawberries. "It was very
cool to see it pull up. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be,"
Baggett said. "I told my husband, 'We just got our groceries delivered by a
robot.'
But Tuesday's launch also highlighted some of the many challenges still ahead
for autonomous vehicles: One of the compact cars didn't drive as planned
at a media demonstration because of a dead battery and had to be pushed up a
ramp and onto a truck by several men. Kroger and Nuro, which is based in
Mountain
View, California, announced Tuesday that they would deliver groceries in the
Scottsdale area, using an autonomous vehicle called the R1, which has no
steering
wheel and no seats for people. Nuro will be adding two of its completely
unmanned R1 vehicles to its fleet of manned self-driving vehicles that deliver
groceries, said Dave Ferguson, president and co-founder of Nuro. When summoned,
the R1 will travel within a 1-mile radius of the Fry's Food store just
east of the Phoenix Zoo at speeds up to 25 miles per hour on residential roads
but stay clear of main roads or highways, according to Pam Giannonatti,
corporate affairs manager at Cincinnati-based Kroger's Fry's division.
Customers
place an order on their smartphone or laptop and get a text message when
the groceries are on their way. Another message will alert them when the
delivery is curbside. Once the vehicle arrives, the customer will receive a code
to punch in to open the doors, Giannonatti said. Customers will pay a flat fee
of $5.95 and can request same-day or next-day delivery. The unmanned delivery
vehicles will be followed by a "shadow car," driven by a person with the
ability
to stop or control it. This car is being used in the early stages of the
program out of caution and will be phased out, Ferguson said. "This is not yet
at the point where in any way it's economically better than just sending
someone out in a car to deliver your groceries," said Bryant Walker Smith, a
professor at the University of South Carolina, who teaches about emerging
technologies. "It will probably cost much more, and the range is minimal, and
there are lots of ways it would not be a true, commercial-scale, viable
deployment,
but it's an important step on that path. Technological hurdles and apprehension
have limited attempts to deploy fully autonomous vehicles on public streets.
Uber pulled its self-driving cars out of Arizona this year after one of the
ride-hailing service's robotic vehicles hit and killed a woman as she crossed
a darkened street in a Phoenix suburb in March. It was the first death
involving
a fully autonomous vehicle. A backup driver was at the wheel. Waymo, a
self-driving car spinoff from a Google project, has been offering free rides in
robotic vehicles with no backup driver as part of a test program in the
Phoenix area for the past year. Earlier this month, Waymo launched a
ride-hailing service available to about 200 people that will have a person
behind
the wheel in case something goes awry. Giannonatti of Kroger said safety is
paramount in this next step of autonomous vehicle technology. Because Nuro's
R1 delivery vehicle is unmanned, it was designed to prioritize safety of other
drivers and pedestrians without trading off the safety or comfort of a driver
or passengers, Ferguson said. The vehicle's size half the width of a Toyota
Corolla also helps prevent collisions with pedestrians because there's more
buffer room, he said. Kroger has been working to boost online sales to keep up
with Walmart and Amazon, which bought grocer Whole Foods last year. Tuesday's
announcement puts Kroger ahead of Walmart and Amazon in self-driving
deliveries,
says Jon Reily, vice president of commerce strategy at Publicis.Sapient.
"But ultimately," he says, "there are so many challenges with autonomous
vehicles" to make it a reality nationwide. Among them: state laws and weather.
Arizona's laws have been friendlier to self-driving vehicles, and the weather
in
Scottsdale is more predictable than in other parts of the country.
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