Nuro, the driverless vehicle that delivers food at home in the US – Corriere.it

Other than riders … The Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant chain will invest in the Nuro self-driving vehicle startup, to create a totally innovative and revolutionary car for home deliveries. We are always looking for opportunities that provide new solutions to facilitate and implement consumers – explains Curt Garner, Chief Technology Officer of Chipotle – and Nuro could change the traditional delivery model and open a new era in the world of food delivery.

NURO AND FIRST DELIVERIES ROBOT Nuro is one of the most beloved self-driving vehicle companies of big brands, having pioneered robotic delivery in the United States: the graceful driverless vehicle Nuro, optimized to contain goods, immediately attracted important collaborations with Walmart, Kroger and CVS , and over $ 1 billion in funding since 2017. Like many other Autonomous Vehicle (AV) startups, Nuro has been testing its technologies for several years before coming out in search of financiers, and this strategy has paid off: the small Nuro R2 became the first autonomous car approved for driverless operation on the roads of California, Arizona and Texas.

BURRITO AND AUTONOMOUS DRIVING CAR But why does a burrito company decide to invest in a robotics company? One would think to deliver the burritos in the fastest and most efficient way. According to Chipotle’s Chief Technology Officer, on the other hand, the investment has a much broader vision: Chipotle not only wants to be the first chain in the world to systematically use autonomous delivery, but wants to pave the way for an experience of different delivery. The great opportunity is to redesign new vehicles, which meet the real needs of delivery. Chipotle already collaborates with Uber Eats, Postmates and Door Dash for meal deliveries and with Nuro would eliminate human drivers, with related costs. But now it goes much further. Most autonomous vehicles have been designed to be able to accommodate a driver, and thus an existing retrofitted vehicle with autonomous technology – explains Chipotle Chief Technology Officer Garner. The Nuro design instead starts from scratch, an AV with no space for a driver and this allows Chipotle to optimize the internal capacity. This not only means that a Chipotle-Nuro vehicle could contain more burritos, but also that an additional storage for drinks and specific compartments could be integrated for the rest.