Commercial Driverless Delivery Service Going To Start In California

The local government of California has provided approval regarding the commercial driverless delivery services for the first time to be used throughout the city. The robotics start-up firm Nuro has planned to start using their services for a complete driverless delivery service for commercial purposes in the upcoming year of 2021, inspired by the coronavirus pandemic.

Driverless technological advancements

The robotics company has previously tested the self-driving vehicle across the state in the month of April amid the coronavirus surge and would soon be provided with a permit, which would allow the firm to charge the general population for using their driverless delivery services.

The R2 vehicle would be travelling throughout the city with the limit speed of up to 56km/hr, and would only be allowed to be operated during fair weather conditions.

The director of California Department of Motor Vehicles said that the initial deployment permit for Nuro is a significantly major milestone that they have been able to achieve in the evolution of automatic vehicles in the major city of United States like California.

As the technology by the robotics firm Nuro develops gradually over time, the safety of the general motoring public is being kept in mind to limit and prevent any unwanted motor vehicle collision by the driverless delivery service.

Nuro was founded by a couple of engineers that previously worked for the tech giant firm Google, and they were able to secure their funding from Softbank, which is a Japanese investment firm.

R2 automated vehicle

The R2 which is to be used for driverless delivery service throughout California has been designed to operate without a human driver or passenger inside the automated vehicle and would be using a 360-degree revolving camera for visual support, thermal imaging to detect nearby vehicles and to live things in the surrounding environment to prevent collision and radar from transmitting signals to-and-fro to the base office. The interior of the R2 vehicle does not have a steering wheel, side-view mirrors or any pedals.

The shape of the driverless delivery service vehicle is in the form of an egg and is smaller in size than most of the cars that are found in the United States. The interior of the vehicle is divided into two compartments for temperature control during the delivery time.

The side doors of the vehicle rise in the upward direction to reveal the items present inside the compartment after entering a specified code that would be provided to the recipient by the firm to prevent missing or stealing of any item by an unauthorized person.

During a previously conducted trial that was administered in the city of Houston, Texas during the month of February, the driverless delivery service vehicle was tested to deliver a Domino Pizza, goods from the nearby Wal-Mart and groceries from Kroger supermarket.

Safety concerns

Although the intensive amount of testing has been done before the approval came for the driverless delivery services to be used in California, the prospect of a motor vehicle accident remains due to minimized safety issues that could arise suddenly at any time.

The technology has been thoroughly tested and evaluated, due to which there only a limited chance of an unexpected event is happening by the driverless delivery service.

The R2 vehicle would only be allowed to travel on surface streets within the speed limit of 35 mph, while the smaller sized bots developed by Nuro that would also be used to deliver items would have the speed limit of 25 mph. This project by Nuro for driverless delivery service is a noteworthy step towards the driverless future with further technological advancements.

In the month of October, the driverless taxi service began their small scale operation in the United States city of Phoenix, as a part of the Waymo service by Google. In the city of Shanghai located in China, a somewhat similar driverless service was also initiated, which was backed up by the retail and tech giant Alibaba.

These are two of the numerous trials that are being conducted throughout the world into various technological adaptations of automatically controlled vehicles to provide several services in an attempt to facilitate the general population of the world.

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