Major US Supermarket Chain Kroger Launches Driverless Grocery Delivery Service

An interesting question is determining the point at which the hassle of shopping is outweighed by the hassle of ordering, scheduling and waiting for robots to do it for you. JL


Theresa Braine in The Daily News and Venture Beat report:

U.S. supermarket chain Kroger said  it has started using unmanned autonomous vehicles to deliver groceries in Scottsdale, Arizona in partnership with Silicon Valley startup Nuro. Kroger said the service would be available at its unit Fry’s Food Stores for $5.95 with no minimum order requirement for same-day or next-day deliveries. "A world without errands, where everything is on-demand and can be delivered affordably.”
Venture Beat U.S. supermarket chain Kroger said  it has started using unmanned autonomous vehicles to deliver groceries in Scottsdale, Arizona in partnership with Silicon Valley startup Nuro.
The delivery service follows a pilot program started by the companies in Scottsdale in August and involved Nuro’s R1, a custom unmanned vehicle.

The R1 uses public roads and has no driver and is used to only transport goods.
Kroger’s deal with Nuro underscores the stiff competition in the U.S. grocery delivery market with supermarket chains angling for a bigger share of consumer spending.
Peers Walmart and Amazon have also invested heavily in their delivery operations by expanding their offerings and shortening delivery times.
Walmart, Ford Motor, and delivery service Postmates said last month they would collaborate to deliver groceries and other goods to Walmart customers and that could someday use autonomous vehicles.
Kroger said the service would be available in Scottsdale at its unit Fry’s Food Stores for $5.95 with no minimum order requirement for same-day or next-day deliveries.

Daily News The grocery chain teamed up with the autonomous vehicle maker Nuro in June and officially begin delivering groceries via robot on Tuesday. They had been testing a version with drivers since August but now have switched to Nuro’s “custom unmanned vehicle,” the R1, Kroger announced. Not much bigger than R2-D2 of the “Star Wars” franchise, the bot-cars will tool along public roads, driverless and laden only with goods, not people.
"Nuro envisions a world without errands, where everything is on-demand and can be delivered affordably,” said president and co-founder Dave Ferguson in a statement. “Operating a delivery service using our custom unmanned vehicles is an important first step toward that goal."
Kroger chief digital officer Yael Cosset said the move would “redefine the grocery experience.”
“Kroger customers are looking for new, convenient ways to feed their families and purchase the products they need quickly through services like pickup and delivery," Cosset said in the statement, adding that this would create “an ecosystem that offers our customers anything, anytime, and anywhere."
The launch comes amid another set of testing elsewhere in Arizona on driverless passenger vehicles run by Waymo, the autonomous-vehicle project originally owned by Google. Those cars have been met with antipathy – run off the road, slashed, and hit with rocks, among other harassment.
Nevertheless, the inexorable trend is spreading. Ford Motor Co. and Walmart are mapping out a driverless grocery delivery service in Miami, Ad Age reported last month.