Domino's Market Tests A Self-Driving Pizza Delivery Car (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Someday soon your Domino's Pizza could be delivered to you -- without an actual delivery person. Ford and Domino's are testing out a specially-equipped Ford Fusion that comes not only with self-driving technology but also an oven. It sounds cool but there is a catch -- there's no one to walk the pizza to your front door and ring the bell. That's what Ford and Domino's say they're really testing. "How will customers react to coming outside to get their food?" Domino's president Russell Weiner said in a statement, "We need to make sure the interface is clear and simple."

During the testing phase, an engineer and a driver will be in the car -- but the windows will be heavily tinted so customers can't see them. And both have been instructed not to interact with people at all. Domino's wants to see how well customers deal with coming out and getting their own pie from what is, basically, a pizza ATM built into the car. To get their pizzas, customers will have to enter a number on the touchpad, then a back window will lower, revealing the pizza. Over the next five weeks, randomly selected customers around Ann Arbor, Michigan, will be offered the option of getting their pizza delivered by the hi-tech "driverless" car.

Comments

Mothership EV could launch drones

[Morgaine]

A 2500 pound vehicle to carry one 1-pound pizza. That's efficient. Make it a drone, obviously.

Combine the two types of autonomous vehicle for the best of both worlds. An autonomous EV van could be loaded with pizzas and able to launch short-hop delivery drones. It could keep one or more drones out delivering to the door while the rest are being recharged on the EV as their mothership.

This overcomes several issues, notably the lack of delivery to the door in Domino's (test) solution. It also ensures that pizza stays hot without needing a heavily insulated box since the trip by air would be much shorter. What's more, it allows the flying drones to be replaced with short-range wheeled delivery bots as an alternative, perhaps chosen on a house by house basis, which may be cheaper and more reliable, or even necessary in the rain.

Recharging on the mothership overcomes both efficiency and range issues, and allows smaller/cheaper batteries to be used in end-delivery vehicles. This in turn could lead towards the short-hop drones/bots becoming cheap, mass-produced, disposable delivery elements.