Kroger launches autonomous grocery delivery service in Arizona
Starting today, residents of Scottsdale, Arizona have the opportunity to receive autonomous grocery deliveries from Fry's Food Stores—a brand owned by grocery giant Kroger. The technology is supplied by Nuro, a self-driving vehicle startup founded by two veterans of Google's self-driving car project. We profiled the company in May.
Kroger says that deliveries will have a flat $5.95 delivery fee, and customers can schedule same-day or next-day deliveries. Initially, the deliveries will be made by Nuro's fleet of modified Toyota Priuses with a safety driver behind the wheel. But Kroger expects to start using Nuro's production model—which doesn't even have space for a driver—this fall.
Kroger is the United States's largest supermarket chain by revenue, the second-largest general retailer (behind Walmart), and the eighteenth largest company in the United States.
Previously: An Unmanned Car May Soon Deliver Your Kroger Groceries
Related: Walmart and Waymo to Trial Driverless Shuttle Service in Phoenix for Grocery Pickups
Related Stories
Submitted via IRC for Sulla
Kroger announced plans Thursday to partner with driverless car company Nuro to deliver groceries using its autonomous vehicles.
The partnership comes as the largest U.S. grocery players continue to tackle the expensive challenge of "last mile delivery" — the final step in getting a product to a shopper's home. It is a feat that is particularly perilous when dealing with fragile products like fresh food. It is further complicated by populations that vary wildly across the U.S., with some far less dense that others.
[...] Earlier this month, [Kroger] said that digital sales for the past quarter had grown 66 percent.
"We cannot just rely on physical stores to reach all of our customers for delivery and and pick-up," said Yael Cosset, Kroger's chief digital officer, in an interview with CNBC.
Kroger has more than 2,800 stores across the U.S., under banners like Fred Meyer, Ralph's and Harris Teeter.
[...] Kroger and Nuro will begin their partnership this fall. Cosset did not detail a timeline, but did say it would be "aggressive." It will experiment with the technology in areas that both overlap with and are separate from where it plans to build out its Ocado warehouses.
[...] In its earlier days, shoppers will need to schedule windows of delivery in advance, but Dave Ferguson, Nuro's co-founder, said he envisions a longer-term model through which shoppers order more on-demand. Nuro also plans partnerships with other retailers beyond Kroger, which it may build by sharing a cut of the revenue.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/kroger-to-soon-begin-driverless-grocery-delivery.html
Walmart To Test Self-Driving Cars For Grocery Pickup Service
The future is here and soon it will be toting grocery shoppers around Phoenix. Walmart and Waymo — formerly Google's self-driving car project — announced on Wednesday the launch of a pilot program that will allow consumers to make their grocery pickups with the help of an autonomous vehicle.
The plan is simple. Participants in Waymo's "early riders" program will be able to take a driverless shuttle service to and from Walmart whenever they purchase groceries from Walmart.com using the retailer's online grocery pickup service.
Current "early riders" will receive incentives to participate in the pilot and the rides will be provided with no additional cost, Molly Blakeman, a Walmart spokesperson, said in an email to NPR. "Since the pilot is part of our Grocery Pickup program, personal shoppers pick customers' orders and bring them right out to the car ... in this case a Waymo self-driving car," she said.
Related: Google/Waymo Announces Testing of Self-Driving Trucks in Atlanta, Georgia
Robots may soon make your FedEx delivery from Walmart, Target and Pizza Hut
The robotic contraption rolling down the street just might be delivering a FedEx package to your home or office. That's the vision, anyway, behind the FedEx SameDay Bot that the shipping giant unveiled Wednesday. This sub-200-pound autonomous delivery robot was developed by DEKA Development & Research Corp, whose founder is Segway inventor Dean Kamen.
The SameDay Bot is so-named because its mission is to help retailers make same-day, "last mile" deliveries to local customers. FedEx is collaborating with AutoZone, Lowe's, Pizza Hut, Target, Walgreens and Walmart.
FedEx plans to test the bot this summer in select markets and FedEx Office locations, starting in the company's own Memphis hometown, pending final approval by the city. That approval would appear to be likely since it has the backing of Mayor Jim Strickland.
According to FedEx, on average, more than 60 percent of merchants' customers live within three miles of a store location, demonstrating the opportunity for on-demand, hyper-local delivery.
BTW, where's my breakfast? (Pizza in bed, please.)
Also at The Verge and Engadget.
Related: Domino's Trials Pizza Delivery Robot With 12-Mile Range
Self-Driving Robot Might be Future of Home Delivery
Delivery Robots: a Revolutionary Step or Sidewalk-Clogging Nightmare?
San Francisco May Ban Delivery Robots
Kroger Launches Trial of Same-Day Autonomous Grocery Delivery Service in Scottsdale, Arizona
(Score: 2) by snufu on Monday August 20 2018, @12:50PM (4 children)
This is a no-brainer. I know what chips and bananas I want. Cut out the retail space, shelf stockers, cashiers, parking, security, etc. Use a centralized warehouse with autonomous cars/drone delivery. Is the robot tech still not there despite the endless hype over the last decade?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 20 2018, @03:07PM
The shelves, even in a warehouse, must be stocked and trucks must be offloaded. (Amazon doesn't use robot pickers for reasons). You lose parking and security and gain the delivery expense of the delivery mechanism, automated or not. You lose cashiers but are now paying more developers to maintain the automated routines to maintenance the kiosk or web store (and I've always had enough ongoing problems with the self-serve checkouts and that is now old tech). You might know what you want but new paradigms must be made for the product makers to pay you to feature their specific brand of the bananas and chips they want you to buy (never heard of corporate payments to get end-cap, preferred product row, or checkout line space? It's a significant component of store income.) Robots might cost less but you have much larger upfront development and deployment cost.
To the bean counters it is matching up when all the expense-income-loan-profit curves are right in order to try it. That's all.
And finally, drones and robot cars need to stop killing individual pedestrians before they will be accepted, no matter if they are safer or not. I wonder if self-drive vehicles are now becoming a bubble - pure guesswork but MVHO is there's too buch buzz and hype on them.
Even then there are those of us who might be luddites (I'm not, actually) who may have ethical reservations about further disruptions that cost more worker jobs than are gained in the process.
Or I could be wrong.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday August 20 2018, @03:33PM (1 child)
Cost of labor. This type of service exists overseas (I've seen it in China specifically); there are companies which will purchase and hand deliver something for you via motorcycle courier.
Now, to replace with robots is a completely different story. Robots are good at repeatable standardized actions. Product selection, purchase, and delivery is probably some of the most difficult tasks to automate.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 20 2018, @06:36PM
Kroger already has ClickList employees, who receive your online order, shop for you, and carry the groceries to your car when you arrive. Presumably they will be involved with this scheme, and even utilized to a greater extent if more people do online orders with this new option.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 20 2018, @06:53PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmazonFresh [wikipedia.org]
https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/14/news/companies/walmart-online-grocery-delivery/index.html [cnn.com]
It's coming. However, there is no full-scale, non-test deployment of autonomous cars for such a purpose. And Amazon has yet to eliminate its warehouse workers by replacing them all with Amazonk Prometheans. Although neither is needed for you to get fresh grocery delivery. You don't see the workers, whether or not they are stressed [theverge.com] humans [businessinsider.com] or bots. And if a human driver delivers groceries, they can unload and leave, so you don't have to unload the car or the delivery service doesn't need a much more complicated robot to unload.
Maybe delivery will become cheaper once autonomous cars can lower per-mile costs. But you can still get delivery in many locations right now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]