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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Here’s The Spoon’s 2019 Food Robotics Market Map

Today we head to San Francisco for The Spoon’s first-ever food-robotics event. ArticulAte kicks off at 9:05 a.m. sharp at the General Assembly venue in SF, and throughout the daylong event talk will be about all things robots, from the technology itself to business and regulatory issues surrounding it.

When you stop and look around the food industry, whether it’s new restaurants embracing automation or companies changing the way we get our groceries, it’s easy to see why the food robotics market is projected to be a $3.1 billion market by 2025.

But there’s no one way to make a robot, and so to give you a sense of who’s who in this space, and to celebrate the start of ArticulAte, The Spoon’s editors put together this market map of the food robotics landscape.

This is the first edition of this map, which we’ll improve and build upon as the market changes and grows. If you have any suggestions for other companies or see ones we missed you think should be in there, let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at tips@thespoon.tech.

Click on the map below to enlarge it.

The Food Robotics Market 2019:

Kroger and Nuro Expand Self-Driving Grocery Delivery to Houston

They say everything is bigger in Texas, but soon, diminutive electric vehicles will be autonomously shuttling around Houston, as Kroger announced today it is expanding its self-driving grocery pilot with Nuro to Texas’ largest city.

Kroger began its self-driving partnership with Nuro in Scottsdale, AZ in August last year and in that time has made thousands of deliveries, according to today’s press announcement. The expansion into Houston will involve two Kroger stores serving four zip codes:

  • Store One: 10306 South Post Oak Road, Houston, TX, servicing 77401 and 77096
  • Store Two: 5150 Buffalo Speedway, Houston, TX, servicing 77005 and 77025

Today’s news comes a little over a month since SoftBank invested $940 million in Nuro, which makes the R1, a pod-like, electric low-speed vehicle. They are about half the size of a traditional car and have a top speed of 25 mph. But Houstonians won’t see those pods on the street quite yet. Similar to the Scottsdale program, the Houston roll out will initially use self-driving Toyota Priuses, before shifting to Nuro’s R1s next year.

While the pilot in Scottsdale has evidently generated enough positive results to expand the program to a more populated city like Houston, there is still a bigger question over whether people want self-driving vehicles for grocery delivery. Part of the value in grocery delivery is the delivery person, who lugs heavy bags from the curb to your front door (or up your steps). This is one reason Nuro’s self-driving rival, AutoX, is putting more emphasis on its restaurant food delivery business.

Kroger didn’t provide a specific launch date for its Houston delivery, only saying that it will start this Spring.

Autonomous grocery delivery is definitely something we will be talking about at our upcoming ArticulATE food robot conference next month in San Francisco. AutoX’s COO, Jewel Li will be speaking as well as Ali Ahmed, the CEO of Robomart, which also uses pod-like vehicles to get you your food. Get your tickets today!

SoftBank Expands its Driverless Delivery Empire with $940M Nuro Investment

SoftBank has invested $940 million into driverless vehicle startup Nuro The Wall Street Journal reports. The deal is noteworthy not just for the amount of money involved, but also for the growth it could spur in driverless delivery, as well as how it plays into SoftBank’s portfolio of automated mobility companies.

Nuro makes autonomous, low-speed electric pod-like vehicles that are about half the size of a traditional car. These pods are built from the ground up to carry goods, and there is literally no room for a driver. Since the pods are light, nimble and top out at 25 mph, they could be a safer alternative to full-sized autonomous vehicles and therefore a more attractive option for risk-averse city planners and regulators creating laws around the emerging driverless delivery space.

One has to wonder how the folks at Robomart, which makes similar pod-like vehicles, are feeling today. On the one hand, Robomart is going after a different market, forsaking direct point-to-point delivery in favor of mobile commerce, so they aren’t direct competitors, and SoftBank’s massive money drop is a validation of low-speed vehicles as a technology. But Nuro’s pods are already being tested by grocery giant Kroger to deliver groceries in Arizona, and this cash infusion will help Nuro quickly scale up is engineering, production and business development. Nuro now has the money to invest in and improve its technology and get its platform used by more partners, potentially boxing out Robomart.

But almost more interesting than Nuro’s newfound cash to expand is Softbank as the investor. Over the past year, SoftBank has made a number of bets on mobility and food delivery:

  • SoftBank and Toyota teamed up for a joint venture called MONET, which will create an autonomous vehicle platform for a number of different smart mobility services including food delivery and even mobile food preparation.
  • SoftBank invested $375 million in Zume, which uses vast amounts of data to predict the amount of pizza delivery on any given night, as well as robots to prepare those pizzas, and mobile ovens to heat them just-in-time for delivery.
  • SoftBank is an investor in both DoorDash and Uber Eats, two food delivery services experimenting with self-driving vehicles, robot delivery and perhaps even drone delivery.

With the Nuro investment, SoftBank adds another delivery form factor (low speed pods) to its logistical lineup. With all of these investments that connect goods and consumers, Softbank is setting itself up to be a dominant player in our increasingly self-driving and delivery-filled future.

Kroger Shifts Driverless Delivery Program into Higher Gear

Kroger announced today that it is ejecting humans from its autonomous delivery vehicle pilot, and going full-on, self-driving car with expanded availability.

Since August, the grocery retailer has been working with robotics company Nuro, testing grocery delivery via autonomous vehicles in Scottsdale, AZ. The initial test run completed close to one thousand deliveries. However, those were all done in self-driving Toyota Priuses, which still had a human in the car, presumably for safety reasons.

Today, Kroger is kicking the people to the curb and kicking the self-driving delivery into a higher gear as it adds Nuro’s autonomous R1. The R1 is a pod-looking vehicle that can only carry cargo with literally no place for a driver.

The two companies are calling this pilot expansion “the first-ever unmanned delivery service available to the general public,” which appears to be true, but it’s certainly not the only self-driving delivery service tests being run right now. Online grocer Farmstead has been running autonomous delivery in the Bay Area with Udelv. And in San Jose, CA, AutoX has been running its own driverless delivery test.

Kroger and Nuro’s approach is a little different as it lies somewhere between traditional delivery cars and the newer, smaller-scale rover-style robots. As noted earlier, the R1 is a completely unmanned vehicle and only transports goods. It travels at less than 25 miles per hour and is half the width of a regular car. This means it can be more nimble than a traditional full-size car when navigating traffic and pedestrians, but it also can’t travel as fast, limiting the delivery radius.

Kroger and Nuro are still in the midst of testing, and full autonomous delivery vehicles are still a ways off as the technology needs to improve and city and state regulations need to be developed to keep up with the technology. However, if you’re in the Scottsdale area, and want to experience a driverless vehicle pulling up to your house delivering your groceries, here’s how you can try it out:

Where: Fry’s Food Stores (single location): 7770 East McDowell Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85257
When: Customers can place delivery orders immediately, for delivery 7 days a week
How: Customers shop via frysfood.com or the Fry’s Food Stores mobile app and place their order based on slot availability
What: Grocery orders can be scheduled for same-day or next-day delivery by Nuro’s fleet of self-driving vehicles
Price: $5.95 flat fee; no minimum order

If you do order, let us know how it goes!

Kroger and Nuro Launch First Pilot for Self-Driving Grocery Delivery Cars in Arizona

Starting today, if you shop at Fry’s Food Store onEast McDowell Road in Scottsdale, Arizona, you can get your groceries delivered via self-driving car.

This is the first such pilot to come from the previously announced partnership between Fry’s parent company, Kroger, and autonomous driving startup Nuro.

According to the press announcement, customers can shop via frysfood.com or the Fry’s Food Stores mobile app, and place their order based on available time slots. Grocery orders can be scheduled for same-day or next-day delivery by Nuro’s fleet of self-driving vehicles for a flat $5.95 fee with no minimum order.

The only bummer about this pilot is that for now, the two companies are using a self-driving Toyota Prius fleet — not the cute li’l R1 robot delivery pod/vehicles (seen in the picture above). The R1s will begin rolling out this fall. A Nuro spokesperson explained the Prius move, telling TechCrunch “The Priuses share many software and hardware systems with the R1 custom vehicle, so while we compete final certification and testing of the R1, the Prius will begin delivering groceries and help us improve the overall service and customer experience.”

What’s not spelled out in the press release is the role of humans in this pilot. As these are tests to learn about consumers’ acceptance of autonomous vehicles for delivery, I assume that there will be a human in the car for safety reasons. But is that a Kroger or a Nuro person? And will they bring the groceries in or just sit in the car while people come out to pick up their food? The R1s don’t have drivers, so those will presumably present an entirely different experience for the customer when those roll out.

Regardless, this self-driving delivery pilot is among the many tech moves Kroger is making in its ongoing grocery delivery battles with the likes of Amazon, Walmart and Albertsons. Earlier this year, Kroger increased its investment in U.K.-based Ocado, and will bring that company’s robotic, smart warehouses and last-mile logistics platform to the U.S. for faster, more efficient delivery.

When all these programs run for real, you’ll have robots packing your groceries, which will be loaded into autonomous vehicles that will deliver them to your door any time of day or night. If you’re in Scottsdale and shop at Fry’s, let us know if you use the new autonomous driving delivery and how well it goes.

Kroger Revs Up More Automation with Self-Driving Delivery Vehicle Partnership

Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., today announced a partnership with robotics startup Nuro, in a deal that will bring same-day grocery delivery to homes via autonomous vehicles.

Nuro’s vehicles are “cars” in that they zip about on four wheels, but they are actually more like sleek, space-age pods built specifically for delivery. They are about half the size of a Toyota Corolla, have different compartments to hold groceries (and more), have a top speed of 25 mph, and oh yeah, no driver.

The partnership will eventually allow customers of Kroger‘s, which has 2,800 stores in 35 states, to order groceries and have them delivered that same day by one of Nuro’s li’l autonomous delivery vehicles. A pilot program between the two companies will roll out this fall, but details on that haven’t been announced yet.

The move from Kroger hits the gas, as it were, on the company betting big on automation. Kroger recently upped its investment in U.K.-based Ocado, and will bring that company’s smart, robot-driven warehouse technology and delivery logistics systems to the U.S.. Kroger will build 20 automated Ocado-style warehouses here over the next three years. So the robot warehouse will pack your groceries, which will then be delivered by self-driving car.

The competition to delivery your groceries fastest and become your supermarket of choice is fierce. Amazon, Albertsons, Walmart, and Target are all ramping up and rolling out two-hour delivery services across the country.

But this announcement should light a fire under delivery services like Instacart and Postmates, who could see their human-powered delivery networks usurped by tireless, unpaid delivery vehicles. Both Instacart and Postmates have done robot delivery partnerships with companies like Robby, who make smaller robots. Postmates also announced a partnership with Ford at CES this year for self-driving car deliveries.

The biggest hurdle facing Kroger may not be rival retailers, however. It could be city and state laws. Last year San Francisco tightened rules around delivery robots, and self-driving cars have made headlines this year by being involved in crashes, sometimes tragically fatal ones.

That isn’t stopping companies from getting into the self-driving delivery vehicle space. In addition to the aforementioned Ford program, CES also saw Toyota unveiling its customizeable e-Palette autonomous delivery vehicles that it hopes to have running around Tokyo in time for the 2020 Olympic games. And Robotmart wants to use self-driving vehicles to bring the grocery store to your door.

While we’re still a ways out from those autonomous delivery vehicles scurrying around neighborhood streets, moves like this from giants like Kroger will help accelerate them becoming a reality.