Nuro first tripped my radar with a Dominos commercial showing its cute, non-threatening autonomous delivery robot happily arriving at someone’s door with a steaming hot pizza. I love me a cute robot, and love a cute robot that brings me pizza even more, but I thought that Nuro must have bigger plans, right? Turns out, it does — and they’ve just announced a new partnership with a global leader in logistics: FedEx.
“FedEx has made a long-term commitment to use Nuro’s autonomous bots for last-mile delivery at large scale,” writes Dave Ferguson, Nuro’s co-founder. “It’s difficult to imagine another company more apt to use our technology to better everyday life … on any given day, its (FedEx’s) 600,000 person team handles about 18 million packages with a fleet of 200,000 vehicles. Now, we get to add Nuro’s next-generation autonomous vehicle to their operations.”
The tiny Nuro robots are fully electric, bigger than they look, and make use of some pretty advanced AI to make their way to and from different locations. Here, you can see how suburban Houston looks through the eyes of an autonomous Nuro R2 … bot? Nurobot?
Nuro AI vs. Houston, TX
Images courtesy Nuro.
There’s no word yet on how many R2 units (ha!) FedEx is buying or where they’re going to be implemented first. Regardless, that is some slick-looking visualization up there, and I’m impressed. It looks very similar to what Volvo (among others) is doing with LiDar. It’s a slick piece, and there’s a ton going on with multiple cameras, advanced software, and a specially-designed, “pedestrian safe” design. It’s neat stuff, developed in concert with industry leaders at Roush to meet a variety of “last mile” delivery needs.
Check out the Nuro R2 for yourself in the handy-dandy infographic, below, then let us know what you’d think of seeing Nuro’s autonomous robot used as a delivery platform for your favorite local restaurant in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
Nuro R2 Infographic
Image courtesy Nuro.
Source | Images: Nuro, via Medium.
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