Pizza delivery is pretty straightforward. You order your delicious pizza — by phone, text, online, whichever way is most convenient and available in your area — you wait, and then a nice delivery person brings your pizza right to your door. Now, however, Domino’s is looking to shake that up a bit by launching driverless pizza delivery.
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Reported by The Verge, Domino’s is teaming up with self-driving delivery startup Nuro to roll out driverless pizza delivery to select Houston residents who order online with the service starting up sometime later this year. Should the pilot rollout go well, it’s possible that Nuro will expand it to other markets.
Nuro has already been using its fleet of robot cars — the R1 — for grocery delivery in Scottsdale, Arizona and has recently expanded the service to Houston. The partnership with Domino’s will use the company’s newer R2 delivery vehicle. How the service will work is similar to Nuro’s grocery deliver service. Domino’s customers will place their order online from one of Domino’s participating stores. After selecting the Nuro delivery option, customers will be able to track the vehicle vial the Domino’s app as well as will be given a unique PIN code to unlock the R2’s special compartment that holds their pizza.
Domino’s partnership with Nuro isn’t the first time the pizza company has tested the driverless delivery concept. In 2017, Domino’s partnered with Ford in Michigan to test self-driving pizza delivery cars. That pilot was designed to see how customers would respond to leaving their houses to collect the pizza, which was kept locked in a warming chamber inside the car. That project has since ended.
Domino’s also isn’t the only pizza company to explore the idea of driverless delivery. Last fall, Pizza Hut unveiled its plan for an autonomous pizza delivery truck expected to debut in 2020. That announcement was paired with a bit of humorous “controversy”, though. The official Twitter account for Netflix’s Black Mirror shared the announcement with a comment of “we know how this goes” — a reference to the anthology series’ fourth season episode “Crocodile”.
What do you think about the prospect of driverless pizza delivery? Let us know in the comments below.
