Asda and Wayve
Asda customers can now receive their shopping via a Wayve self-driving vehicle in what is pitched as the UK’s largest autonomous grocery home delivery trial.
In partnership with Wayve, the year long trial will give the supermarket the ability to autonomously deliver groceries to a catchment area of over 170,000 residents across 72,000 households in London.
The self-driving vehicles will join its existing online delivery operation at the Park Royal superstore in West London and have the capability to drive themselves to customers’ homes.
Asda Park Royal customers can place their next-day delivery orders online as usual, choosing from the full range of online products and selecting a delivery slot that suits them.
The only difference is they could be randomly selected to have their order delivered in a self-driving vehicle.
During the trial, both an Asda colleague and supervising Wayve safety driver will be in the vehicle when making deliveries. Asda colleagues will load and unload the groceries at the customer’s home.
ŻABKA GROUP
Żabka Group’s Żabka Nano pop-up autonomous store offering is now live at Szpital Wojewódzki w Poznaniu hospital in Poland.
In a LinkedIn post, Patryk Powierża, Head of Growth at Żabka Polska, said: “First Żabka Nano store in a hospital.”
“We truly believe that autonomous stores can bring more convenience to the life of our customers. Thanks to this autonomous technology we can open our store in locations where traditional stores can’t appear.”
“Our Nano store in the hospital will be open in a few weeks and it will be ready to serve patients, their families, and hospital employees in 24/7/365 mode.”
Starship Technologies
Starship Technologies reports that its delivery robots have passed the 10 million km mark (over six million miles) in terms of distance travelled around the world.
It claims that this is further than any other company in the industry, and more than six times that of the one million mile mark recently announced by self-driving car developers, Waymo and Cruise.
To hit this milestone, Starship’s 2,000+ strong fleet of robots have made more than four million autonomous deliveries globally, also an industry leading figure, and completed 140,000 road crossings around the world every day.
While they have been operating at the L4 level of autonomous driving since 2018, the company also reports that one of its robots recently completed a company record 24 deliveries in 16 hours 100% autonomously without any human intervention or oversight.
