First autonomous delivery fleet in Canada
The idea of ‘driverless’ vehicles has been growing rapidly in recent years with tests and some ‘semi-autonomous’ vehicles already on the road.
Now a major grocery chain has signed a deal with a U.S. company to provide a fleet of small ‘autonomous’ delivery trucks.
Grocery chain Loblaw Companies Ltd. has signed a deal with California company Gatik AI, to supply five small delivery trucks which will be on public roads starting in January.
Teaming with California company Gatik, Loblaws will have five of the vehicles making deliveries starting next year. Although fully autonomous, the vehicles will have a human co-pilot for safety (Gatik)
Gatik has been supplying light and medium duty AI delivery trucks for business to business short haul trips, shuttling goods from distribution warehouses to retail outlets. Gatik already uses the technology in conjunction with Walmart in Arkansas in 2019, and other customers claiming 30,000 autonomous deliveries.
n a press release, Lauren Steinberg, senior vice president of Loblaw Digital said, “As more Canadians turn to online grocery shopping, we’ve looked at ways to make our supply chain more efficient. Middle-mile autonomous delivery is a great example,” .
The deal with Canada’s Loblaw chain will see five vehicles driving on urban, suburban, and highway routes from Loblaw’s automated picking facility (for online orders) along five fixed routes to Loblaw PC Express online pickup locations in Toronto. The vehicles will be making multiple trips seven days a week for 12 hours a day.
With almost 30 cameras and sensors, the vehicles first spend up to six weeks ‘learning’ a route before making actual revenue deliveries.
The fleet deal comes after a 10-month trial with one vehicle in the city. Gatik and Loblaw are eager to test the technology long term in Canada’s variable weather conditions.
All vehicles will also have a human driver on board as a ‘co-pilot’ for safety reasons.
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