Delivery pizza brings autonomous vehicles to the masses
Robots are coming and they’re bringing pizza. Domino’s will test its Nuro R2 robots in Houston’s Woodland Heights neighborhood. The autonomous bots will be able to travel on public roads, and they will need to negotiate traffic to get to their destination.
“There’s still much that our brand can learn about autonomous delivery. “This program will enable us to better understand customers’ responses to deliveries, how they interact and how it affects store operations,” Dennis Maloney (Domino’s senior vice president, chief innovation officer) said about the program.
The Nuro R2 autonomous, occupantless on-road vehicle has been approved by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It cannot travel on sidewalks and bike lanes. The robot is also permitted to operate on California’s public roads as of December 2020.
The vehicle can travel at a speed of 25 mph (40 km/h). The battery is 31-kilowatts per hour. The R2 can carry a payload weight of 419 pounds (190 kg). The sensor suite contains 360-degree overlapping cameras and thermal imaging cameras. LiDAR, ultrasonics and short- and long range radars are also included.
Domino’s has been trying to deliver pizza autonomously for several years. It held an experiment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which saw a self-driving Ford Fusion transport food. Later, the company expanded the evaluation to Miami, Florida.
Although it’s not as innovative as a robot carrying pizzas , Domino’s also created an in-car app to order a pie . This is a good idea, but it doesn’t make sense to use when most people have a smartphone.