Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

autonomous delivery

Robomart Partners With PIX Moving to Build Mobile Retail Stores On Top of PIX’s Skateboard Chassis Platform

Robomart, a company that helped pioneer the concept of “store hailing” when it first brought its concept of mobile convenience stores to CES five years ago, announced it had signed a deal with autonomous mobile vehicle platform company PIX Moving to utilize PIX Moving’s expertise in autonomous vehicle production to enhance its fleet of mobile retail stores.

PIX is a logical partner for Robomart on which to build its mobile storefronts because the PIX chassis has always been designed to enable functional and end-use design flexibility from the get-go. PIX’s platform allows for custom-designed compartments, which can be optimized for specific needs like size and temperature control. When we first covered PIX here at the Spoon, one of the concepts the company envisioned was a mobile grocery or convenience store on wheels.

Chinese company Pix Moving is taking a bit of a different approach to autonomous vehicles by removing most of the vehicle. The company is building a self-driving chassis platform on top of which its customers can build whatever they like.

So a big restaurant chain could create a mobile pod of lockers for meal delivery, or a grocery store could create a temperature-controlled store on wheels. A large warehouse-type store could just attach a flat base for moving inventory around.

Since then, PIX has expanded its vision towards building its own branded vehicles and has started calling its chassis a “skateboard chassis platform. ” The Robobus model PIX unveiled a couple of years ago looks pretty similar to the original Robomart concept, so building the next-generation autonomous Robomart models on top of the PIX platform looks like a fairly smooth transition.

I asked Robomart CEO Ali Ahmed how he sees the PIX-powered vehicles being rolled out and integrated with the current Robomart fleets, and he says that the PIX chassis-based Robomarts will start to be phased into the fleet starting near the end of 2025. Spoon readers will know that the current-gen Robomarts – which are called the Oasis model – are retrofitted sprinter vans manned by a driver and that Robomart introduced its autonomous version concept (called the Haven) last summer when it announced a funding round of $2M. Now, we know the PIX platform will power the Robomarts of the future, and, according to Ahmed, it will sit underneath both future smaller stores (like the future autonomous versions of the Oasis) and bigger stores in the Haven.

While it may not be a mobile store, you can see a PIX vehicle in action in the video below.

Meet PIX Moving Space at the park

Unilever & Robomart Rolling Out Mobile Ice Cream Shops in Los Angeles This Summer

If you live in select neighborhoods in LA this summer, you won’t have to wait for that familiar ice cream truck jingle before running outside to grab a cold treat.

That’s because you can order one to come to your house by using the store-hailing app of Robomart via its partnership with Unilever. Last week, the two companies announced they are partnering up to trial a fleet of mobile ice cream shops powered by Robomart’s technology under Unilever’s virtual ice cream brand, The Ice Cream Shop.

Here’s how it works: Customers hail the mobile Ice Cream Shop to their location using Robomart’s mobile app. Once it arrives, the user swipes across the app to open the vehicle’s door. Robomart’s checkout-free system allows customers to select their ice cream and walk away without tapping or pulling out a credit card.

Robomart founder Ali Ahmed told The Spoon that the Ice Cream Shops would run seven days a week for at least 12 hours a day. Robomart employees will drive the stores (interaction with the stores is fully automated) and restock the mobile shops at Robomart operations hubs.

Some might feel that using a Robomart Ice Cream Shop isn’t the same as that iconic childhood experience of hearing that familiar jingle, grabbing your change, and racing outside to grab a treat. This tech-powered approach is also much less accessible than the old-school ice cream truck since it requires someone to have a smartphone and someone old enough to have digital payment capabilities.

Concerns aside, there’s something to be said for being able to bring the ice cream truck to you, mainly because the everyday ice cream truck isn’t so everyday anymore.

For Robomart, the deal follows last year’s rollout of its mobile storefronts in West Hollywood. According to Ahmed, the company now has about 100 Robomarts “booked” under contract. After the trial, Ahmed says Unilever and Robomart plan roll out the Ice Cream Shop in new neighborhoods in LA and into other parts of the country.

Watch as Serve’s Sidewalk Robot Completes a Delivery With Level 4 Autonomy

This week, Serve Robotics announced that its sidewalk delivery robot can now complete deliveries at level 4 autonomy. According to the company, this makes their robot the first autonomous vehicle to complete commercial deliveries without the need for human assistance.

For those not familiar with autonomous driving parlance, level 4 autonomy means that Serve’s robot can now navigate a trip without the intervention of a human driver. However, as seen in the video below, at level 4, a human driver can choose to intervene to ensure an extra level of safety (as the Serve driver does at a crosswalk light).

Watch as Serve Delivery Robot Achieves Level 4 Autonomy

According to the announcement, this milestone is the result of a robot built with a highly redundant navigation system employing multiple cutting-edge technologies. The navigation system “includes multiple sensor modalities—active sensors such as lidar and ultrasonics, as well as passive sensors such as cameras—to navigate safely on busy city sidewalks. Serve Robotics’ achievement required development of a wide range of market-leading capabilities, such as automatic emergency braking, vehicle collision avoidance, and fail-safe mechanical braking.”

In the announcement, the company credits a couple of their technology partners in helping to reach this milestone. One of those companies is NVIDIA, whose Jetson platform provides the Serve robot with AI-computing to navigate complex unstructured environments. Serve also gave a shout-out to lidar-maker Ouster, which provides small and power-efficient lidar to help power Serve’s self-driving capabilities.

Up to this point, pretty much all autonomous sidewalk delivery robots employ the help of human drivers to navigate their routes. And even looking forward, even Serve and other bots move to level 4 autonomy, expect remote human drivers to continue to be in demand. That’s because there will always be potential unforeseen circumstances on different routes, and companies (like Serve) will want that extra layer of safety as their bots navigate through dense city environments.

However, with these types of advancements, human robot operators will be able to handle larger fleets over time. While some robot (and drone) delivery services already operate at a multiple-to-one ratio, higher autonomy means humans to robot ratios can increase, allowing pilots to handle more and more robots as they are deployed to the field.

7-Eleven & Nuro Launch California’s First Autonomous Delivery Service

7-Eleven announced today they are launching an autonomous delivery pilot program in Mountain View, California, in partnership with autonomous delivery tech startup Nuro.

While the Golden State has been a hotbed of activity for autonomous delivery for sidewalk bots, California has trailed Texas in the rollout of autonomous on-street deliveries. All that changes today with the launch of the Nuro pilot, which will be the first commercial autonomous delivery service in the state of California. The path for the program was paved late last year when Nuro received the first-ever Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit from the California DMV.

As with other Nuro rollouts, the 7-Eleven deployment will eventually use both the company’s proprietary R2 robot and Toyota Prius’s equipped with Nuro’s self-driving hardware and software. However, according to the announcement, the pilot will begin with outfitted Priuses that include a human driver in the driver’s seat. These “autonomous vehicle operators” will monitor the technology and ensure an optimal delivery experience, but will not bring the delivery to the door of the customer so as to make the service feel as ‘human-free’ as possible. Eventually, the two companies plan to introduce the Nuro R2 bots (without human drivers) into the pilot.

Customers in the Mountain View area who want to try out the service can start by placing an order with the 7-Eleven 7NOW app. After choosing autonomous delivery, customers should see a Nuro-powered Prius pulling up with their Slurpee and cheese dog order within 30 minutes. The service will be available to those nearby the 7-Eleven at 1905 Latham Street in Mountain View. Deliveries will be available from 8AM–9PM, seven days a week.

You can watch a video of how the 7-Eleven/Nuro pilot service below:

7 Eleven and Nuro Pilot Autonomous Delivery in California

Walmart’s Had a Big Month When it Comes to Autonomous Robot Delivery

It’s bragging time in Bentonville.

That’s because America’s biggest grocery retailer recently achieved two big milestones in autonomous delivery.

The first milestone is on the autonomous middle-mile front where Walmart and partner Gatik announced they had initiated daily driverless-truck delivery in Walmart’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. Walmart had started working with the maker of middle-mile autonomous box trucks in 2019 and by last December, the two received approval from the Arkansas State Highway Commission to remove drivers from the vehicles. In August, the two started trialing autonomous delivery runs between Walmart dark stores and local markets. And last week, the companies announced they are doing multiple driver-less truck runs per day, seven days a week.

The Gatik Autonomous Delivery Vehicle Delivering Products for Walmart

The other big autonomous delivery news for Walmart is the launch of the company’s drone delivery service.

This week the retailer’s drone partner Zipline announced the two had launched a drone delivery service in the northwestern Arkansas of Pea Ridge. Zipline’s technology utilizes a 25-foot take-off and landing platform which is located directly behind the Walmart Neighborhood Market location in Pea Ridge. There, a Walmart employee hands a package to a Zipline employee, who will then load the package into the belly of the drone for delivery. Once the drone reaches the delivery destination, the package is dropped over its target, where it will float down to earth thanks to an attached biodegradable parachute. The service area is within a 50-mile radius of the store.

The launch of drone delivery has been a long time in the making for Walmart. The company first started testing drones way back in 2015 and, ever since that time, has been running pilots and inking partnerships. In the meantime, Walmart’s competitors have been investigating drone delivery, which is perhaps why the giant retailer has picked up the pace over the past year.

Zipline Partners With Walmart on Commercial Drone Delivery

So Walmart appears to be making headway in drones and autonomous middle mile delivery, but what about road or sidewalk delivery to consumers? The last time we heard of Walmart making any moves in that space was when the company trialed with Nuro and Udelv in 2019, but they’ve been relatively quiet on that front. And as for sidewalk bots, the company hasn’t really shown any interest publicly, but that’s not to say they aren’t talking to folks.

Gatik Raises $85M Series B, Brings Automated Middle Mile Delivery to Texas

Autonomous middle mile delivery company, Gatik, announced today that it has raised an $85 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, with participation from existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Wittington Ventures, FM Capital, Dynamo Ventures, Trucks VC among others. This brings the total amount raised by Gatik to $114.5 million

Despite its hum-drum name, the middle mile is far from middle of the road. In fact, the middle mile is perhaps one of the more exciting areas in autonomous vehicles right now. For those unfamiliar, the middle mile is the route between two business-to-business locations. Think: a retailers distribution warehouse to one of its store locations. Because the route is fixed, there are fewer variables a self-driving vehicle would encounter (same road, typically the same traffic conditions, etc.).

Because of these route limitations, it can be faster for a autonomous middle mile delivery company like Gatik to get to market. Local regulators don’t have to worry about self-driving cars learning and navigating complex situations and added safety concerns that come with delivering to a neighborhood house. Gatik now operates delivery routes in Toronto, Canada for Loblaws and for Walmart in Louisiana and Arkansas, where its middle mile route is fully driverless.

Along with today’s funding announcement, Gatik also said that it is expanding its operations into Dallas, Texas. Gautam Narang, Co-Founder and CEO of Gatik told me via video chat last week that as part of its move into Dallas, Gatik has signed undisclosed customers, which Gatik will be serving simultaneously, operating its trucks almost around the clock. “[We’ll be] moving goods for customer A during the day and customer B during the night,” Narang said.

The big funding and big move into Texas is the continuation of a big year for Gatik. So far this year the company has introduced an all-electric box truck, received $9 million (CAD) from the Canadian government to help winterize its technology, and partnered with Isuzu to develop autonomous medium-sized delivery trucks.

There isn’t a ton of competition right now in the autonomous middle mile space. Udelv unveiled its Transporter platform in April of this year. Unlike Gatik’s vehicles, which look like regular delivery trucks, Udelv’s Transporters are essentially giant pods, that don’t even have a place for a driver.

Between the investment and customers that Gatik is attracting, and the expanding willingness of local regulators to allow autonomous middle mile delivery, I suspect we’ll be seeing more players enter the space this year.

Ocado Invests £10M in Oxbotica to Develop Self-Driving Vehicles

UK-based grocer Ocado announced today that it has invested £10 million (~$13.8M USD) in autonomous vehicle (and fellow UK) company Oxbotica. The investment is part of an broader, multi-year deal to develop self-driving hardware and software.

For Ocado, autonomous vehicle tech could have a number of uses, from self-driving warehouse vehicles to delivery vans to smaller autonomous robots.

That Ocado bought Oxbotica to bring autonomy further up and down its tech stack makes a lot of sense. The grocer already makes autonomous smart warehouses filled with robots zipping along grids assembling items for grocery orders. It’s natural to extend that autonomy throughout its warehouses and into delivery vehicles. It’s easy to envision robots picking and packing grocery orders, which are then handed off to warehouse robot that places it in a self-driving delivery van that drives off to a customer’s house.

Ocado has also shown that it’s not shy about spending money on autonomous systems. Last year purchased Kindred Systems and Haddington Dynamics to enhance its robotics capabilities. And prior to that it led the $9 million Seed round in cafeteria robot company Karakuri.

Ocado’s investment in Oxbotica actually caps off what has been a big week for autonomous vehicles. Udelv announced its new self-driving Transporter platform. Domino’s tapped Nuro to make autonomous pizza deliveries in Houston, Texas. And Walmart announced it had invested in self-driving startup, Cruise.

It’s also been a big news week for Ocado. The company’s technology powers Kroger’s Customer Fulfillment Centers, the first of which opened up in Monroe, Ohio this week. For its part, Kroger has dabbled in self-driving delivery before through a partnership with Nuro.

If you want to learn more about robotics in grocery, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food automation virtual summit happening on May 18. There will be a number of autonomous vehicle companies as well as Karakuri speaking!

Walmart Invests in Self-Driving Car Company, Cruise

Walmart announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in autonomous driving company Cruise. Walmart’s investment is part of a larger $2.75 billion round of funding being raised by Cruise.

The investment comes after five months of the two companies working together. In November, Walmart announced it would pilot the use of Cruise’s self-driving vehicles for grocery delivery in Scottsdale, Arizona.

As we reported back in November, its partnership with Cruise ticked off a couple of boxes for Walmart. First, the retailer has been adding automation throughout its logistics and fulfillment stack to keep up with the increase in grocery (and other) e-commerce. Walmart is using Gatik trucks for middle-mile deliveries, adding automated fulfillment centers to its stores, and robotic curbside pickup kiosks.

But the Cruise relationship also helps with Walmart’s environmental goals. Cruise’s self-driving cars are 100 percent electric, and Walmart has a goal of achieving zero emissions across all its operations by 2040 and using 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.

Commercial use of self-driving vehicles is certainly getting a big push this year. One of Walmart’s middle-mile delivery routes in Arkansas will go full driverless this year. And just this week Udelv announced an entirely new line of Transporter autonomous delivery vehicles, while Domino’s announced it would be using Nuro’s self-driving pod vehicles for pizza delivery in Texas.

Self-driving cars on public roads still have a ways to go before they become mainstream, as there is still plenty of regulation that needs to be ironed out. But getting a financial push from giants like Walmart will certainly go a long way to getting self-driving vehicles on the road and to our doors (with groceries).

If you’re interested in the future of self-driving vehicle delivery, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotic summit on May 18. Gatik, Pix and other players in the space will speak!

Domino’s and Nuro Begin Autonomous Pizza Delivery in Texas

Domino’s today announced the launch of its autonomous pizza delivery service done in partnership with self-driving delivery company Nuro. Starting this week, customers of the Woodland Heights Domino’s location in Houston, Texas can opt to have their pizza delivered by Nuro’s R2 robot.

The R2 is a low-speed, pod-like vehicle that’s about half the size of a regular car and completely autonomous. (There isn’t even room for a human being to sit in the vehicle.) Nuro got Federal permission in February of 2020 to start driving the R2 on public roads. In April of 2020, the state of California also gave Nuro the thumbs up to drive on its public roads.

For the Domino’s partnership, customers that order from the participating location via Domino’s digital properties can opt to get their order delivered by R2. As the vehicle makes its way along the route, customers receive alerts via texts. Once the ‘bot arrives, customers use a unique PIN to open R2’s doors and grab their order. 

Autonomous delivery is currently only available on certain days and at certain times at the Woodland Heights location. Today’s press announcement did not mention if or when the pilot would expand to other Domino’s locations.

Domino’s and Nuro first started testing autonomous delivery in Houston back in 2019. The pandemic has since increased the need for more contactless forms of food delivery, making autonomous delivery vehicles an attractive option. Underscoring this, Nuro raised $500 million in November of last year. To date, the company has made deliveries for Kroger, CVS, and Walmart, in addition to Domino’s.

Domino’s, of course, is no stranger to bringing tech into the restaurant delivery process — something it was doing long before the existence of third-party delivery. The company said in today’s press release that the Houston program will help them better understand autonomous delivery’s impact on both operations at Domino’s and customer relationships. 

If you are interested in the future of self-driving delivery vehicles, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our virtual food automation and robotics summit happening on May 18!

PIX Moving Raises Pre-Series A Round of Funding for Self-Driving “Skateboard” Chassis

PIX Moving, a Chinese company that makes chassis for self-driving vehicles, announced at the end of last week that it has raised a Pre-Series A round of funding. Details in the English-language press release provided to The Spoon didn’t provide a specific dollar amount, only saying it had raised “tens of millions” in Chinese Yuan. The only investor listed in this round is Guizhou Transportation Planning Survey&design Academe Co., ltd.

Dubbed the “skateboard,” PIX’s chassis can be used to power a number of different types of low-speed autonomous vehicles. Most relevant to Spoon readers, restaurant or third-party delivery companies could use affix lockers on top of PIX’s skateboard to make a mobile automat, or a grocer could create a temperature-controlled store on wheels.

According to today’s press announcement, 23 types of vehicles have been developed using PIX’s platform, and vehicles have been delivered to roughly 100 customers around the world. To help speed up production of its skateboard, PIX has also developed Lightsaber, a 3D metal printing manufacturing system that removes the need for molds.

When we last checked in with PIX, the company was still navigating the various regulations around self-driving vehicles in China and the U.S., though the company had deployed vehicles to private campuses in both countries.

While self-driving vehicles still have a number of hurdles to overcome before they go mainstream, they have gotten much closer to hitting the road, as it were, over the past year. Last year, Nuro’s self-driving pod-like vehicle got approvals from the federal and California governments to operate on public roads. More recently, Gatik, which builds autonous delivery trucks for the middle mile, announced that it would operate two of its routes without human drivers this year.

As it moves closer to market, PIX said it will use its new funding to mass produce its vehicles for a variety of applications.

Imperium Drive Comes Out of Stealth with Bandwidth-Aware Teleoperation for Robots

One of the many questions facing delivery robot startups as they come to market is how much autonomy to give the robots. Should they go full autonomous driving, even though that is more technically complex and there is still a patchwork of regulation that needs to be dealt with? Or should they go with less autonomy and use humans to help guide or even drive their robots to sidestep some of the complications that come with self-driving vehicles.

For robot delivery startups wrestling with these questions, Imperium Drive says it’s here to help. Based in Europe (the company is scattered across different countries because of the pandemic) and part of the TechStars Smart Mobility cohort, Imperium Drive makes a teleoperation system for autonomous vehicles, including the small rover robots favored by the likes of Starship, Kiwibot, Postmates and others.

Imperium does the whole teleoperation stack, from the software onboard the robot to the human on the other end who helps the robot navigate. Imperium lets robot companies choose how much teleoperation they want, depending on their robot’s level of autonomy. Imperium can have a human simply monitor the robot remotely in case it gets stuck or runs into trouble, or the company can plot points on a map for the robot to autonomously follow. At the far end of the spectrum, Imperium can have a human actually drive the delivery robot remotely, like a videogame.

Imperium Drive Co-Founder and CEO, Koosha Kaveh, told me by phone this week that his company’s secret sauce is its ability to operate even when network connections provide only low bandwidth. As the robot runs around town, the strength of its cellular connection will vary, sometimes offering very small pipes for data to get through.

“We’ve developed our own AI predictive engine that predicts changes of network parameters,” said Kaveh, “And we change automatically our streaming engine based on availability.”

A easy way to think about Imperium’s bandwidth technology is Netflix. The movie streaming service will detect how much bandwidth you have (e.g., a cellular connection versus wired Ethernet) and serve a movie in a resolution fit for that situation. Imperium does the same thing, just with data from the robot.

Delivery robots are actually streaming a lot of data back to their headquarters. There’s video from the robot’s on-board cameras as well as lidar and radar information. Imperium adapts what is streamed based on the amount of bandwidth. For example, if there’s very little bandwidth, Imperium can send just wireframes of the robots surroundings. Kaveh said that it can stream the relevant information a teleoperator needs at under 1MB of data.

The idea of teleoperating robots brings up the question of scale. It’s easy to understand self-driving robots scaling up to meet demand because that’s the whole point — there is no human labor to pay. Once you have the robots, they can just run around the clock with no additional cost. What happens to the economics when you have a human handling a robot?

Kaveh says Imperium has a network of inexpensive labor in Eastern Europe that it can tap into to teleoperate robots. And Imperium isn’t alone in using humans to guide robots. Kiwibot has a team of people in Colombia that plots the courses for its robots (not full-on driving). And Tortoise skipped the idea of self-driving altogether for its robots, believing it can create a Mechanical Turk style army of human gig-work teleoperators.

The fact that Imperium Drive exists is at least some indication that the delivery robot space is maturing. As we outlined in our Delivery Robot Market Report, there are many companies around the world deploying delivery robots on city streets. Imperium Drive is part of a typical business cycle for new market categories like delivery bots. It’s not creating the robots themselves, but adding a layer to make those robots run more efficiently. As robots gain traction, we’ll see more third-party add-ons like this meant to improve robot delivery operations.

Gatik Debuts Electric Version of its Autonomous Middle-Mile Delivery Truck

Gatik, which focuses on self-driving vehicles for middle-mile delivery, today announced its electrification strategy and introduced its new Electric Autonomous Box Truck.

The first of Gatik’s electric trucks will be Ford Transit 350 HDs that were developed in partnership with electric drive company Via Motors. The new trucks have an all-electric powertrain, a range of 120 miles and can charge in less than 1.5 hours.

Gatik’s self-driving vehicles handle middle mile delivery, meaning that they transports goods closer to a consumer, but not all the way to them. A typical middle-mile route might be between a warehouse and a store location, and Gatik’s trucks become, in essence, a self-driving conveyor belt between points. Since the trucks travel a fixed route, Gatik can eliminate some of the variables that come with self-driving technology. They don’t, for example, need to constantly calculate new routes through a bunch of different neighborhoods to people’s front doors.

Gatik has previously said that this limited scope makes it easier to get regulatory approval and therefore its self-driving trucks on the road. Walmart announced in December that the Gatik trucks on one of its Bentonville, Arkansas routes will be allowed to remove the safety driver altogether and go full driverless this year.

In December, Walmart also announced that it would be adding Gatik’s truck to a second delivery route between New Orleans and Metairie, LA. That route is where the first of Gatik’s electric trucks will be in operation starting this month.

Electrification of its vehicle fleet is actually a stated goal of Walmart as the giant retailer aims to reach zero emissions by 2040. In addition to fewer emissions, with a recharge time of just 1.5 hours, Gatik’s new electric vehicles can recharge as they are being unloaded and loaded allowing for continuous operation.

The middle mile isn’t the only area where Walmart is testing out electric, self-driving delivery. The retailer has also partnered with electric car maker Cruise to test autonomous grocery delivery in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Last- and middle-mile delivery may also begin to blur in new ways, thanks in part to automation. Walmart has indicated that the middle mile may include consumer pickup stations, allowing people who don’t live near a Walmart store to purchase items from the retailer and pick them up closer to their homes.