The average American goes to the grocery store more than 80 times throughout the course of a year. As a result, there are many Americans who can’t stand going to the grocery store and wish there was a way to get out of doing it so often. Now, they might just get their wish thanks to a new partnership between two companies that are aiming to make same-day grocery delivery easier than ever through the use of self-driving cars.
Kroger, a grocery store chain that has been around for more than 130 years, is hoping to save people from making frequent trips to the supermarket by teaming up with a robotics company called Nuro.
The Silicon Valley-based Nuro has created a lineup of autonomous vehicles for Kroger, which are called R1 car bots, that are capable of delivering grocery orders directly to the homes of those who place them.
The R1 features two climate-controlled compartments that can hold as many as six grocery bags at a time. It can travel up to 25 miles per hour and is equipped with a series of sensors and radars that help guide it to its destinations. And once it arrives at a person’s home with groceries, it’s designed to provide the person with a code that will allow them to access their groceries and bring them inside before sending the R1 on its way.
Kroger and Nuro are still running tests on the R1 to improve its performance and perfect the way that it delivers grocery orders to people. But it certainly sounds like they’re fully invested in its success and looking forward to making this grocery delivery option a reality. With one 2018 study suggesting that about 70 percent of Americans could be purchasing groceries online within the next five to seven years, Kroger and Nuro are committed to using autonomous vehicles to give more people the option of obtaining same-day grocery delivery.
Kroger and Nuro probably won’t be the last two companies to try this, either. As more and more self-driving cars hit the road, it’s only a matter of time before other companies in other industries start finding ways to provide customers with same-day and potentially even same-hour delivery through the use of vehicles that can drive and make deliveries themselves.
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