Shift Magazine - March 2021 - S20

AN APPETITE FOR

AUTOMATION

From bots to long-haul trucks, food-delivery
vehicles becoming a main dish on the AV menu

T

BY DALE BUSS

he food business originally
lagged other industries in embracing digital transformation. But the
pandemic and autonomous vehicle
technology are now catapulting grocery
and restaurant delivery to the forefront
of e-commerce and the digital revolution
overall. Food has been muscling into a
lead compared with other major verticals
such as deliveries of medical supplies or
manufacturing parts.
" Grocery deliveries and medical supplies are the two areas driving adoption
of autonomous delivery, " said Anand
Gopalan, CEO of Velodyne Lidar, which
supplies key technology to help self-driving vehicles find their way.

Velodyne's lidar technology helps AVs get
to their food-delivery destinations.

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shift * march 2021

" Many items have a short shelf life
and require same-day delivery, so the
robotic solution becomes very attractive, " Gopalan said.
Daniel Davenport, senior director of
the North American automotive
practice for CapGemini consultants, added: " We have to
eat every day, and that kind
of habitual consumption and
regularity is a real driver for
companies to be interested
in AVs. "
Bots, even drones in a
few cases, already are crisscrossing " last mile " delivery
segments of cities, dropping
off chicken-parmesan sandwiches or bags of Tostitos in
both pilot and early commercial phases.
" There will be humorously
awkward moments where
we'll pull up at an intersection
and run into two or three others
testing delivery AVs, though the
others have safety drivers, "
said Matthew JohnsonRobertson, CEO of Refraction AI, which has
a fleet of 25 threewheeled delivery bots
plying the streets of
Ann Arbor, Mich., the
college town where
other AV experimenters have included
hometown
pizza
giant Domino's.
In general, progress in the food delivery business varies

The use of
ground-delivery
bots to transport
everything from
restaurant meals
to groceries is
surging.
Shift Magazine - March 2021

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