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Kroger Will Use Autonomous Vehicles To Deliver Groceries (theverge.com)
Starting this fall, Kroger will partner with driverless car company Nuro to deliver groceries using its autonomous vehicles. The Verge reports: A pilot will be rolled out to a yet-to-be-announced city later this fall. To start out, Nuro will use a fleet of self-driving test vehicles with human safety drivers to make deliveries for Kroger's grocery stores. Customers can track and interact with the vehicles via a Nuro app or Kroger's pre-existing online delivery platform. But if Nuro's human test drivers don't get out to help you, don't be mad because in our driverless future, we all need to pitch in and unload our own groceries.
Nuro is still tweaking its user experience, but for now it will go something like this: customers can place an order through Kroger's online delivery portal or using Nuro's forthcoming app. Kroger workers will load the items into Nuro's temperature-controlled compartments, at which point the vehicle will drive autonomously to its destination. Customers can track the vehicle throughout the trip using the app, and once it arrives, will need to meet the vehicle at the curb or in their driveway -- in other words, no more door-to-door service. They can use either a PIN code or some other verification system to retrieve their delivery. Nuro was reportedly working on a facial recognition system, but has since tabled that.
Nuro is still tweaking its user experience, but for now it will go something like this: customers can place an order through Kroger's online delivery portal or using Nuro's forthcoming app. Kroger workers will load the items into Nuro's temperature-controlled compartments, at which point the vehicle will drive autonomously to its destination. Customers can track the vehicle throughout the trip using the app, and once it arrives, will need to meet the vehicle at the curb or in their driveway -- in other words, no more door-to-door service. They can use either a PIN code or some other verification system to retrieve their delivery. Nuro was reportedly working on a facial recognition system, but has since tabled that.
We still see stories about driverless not fully being there yet. I know this is them trying to compete with Amazon and get this out earlier, but it seems weird to be ready to go ahead and start sending driverless cars (with safety riders, I know) all around at people's orders.
I wonder how many failed deliveries they will have when people don't come outside to unload their own groceries.
Greed is the root of all evil.
People who are handicapped or otherwise unable to unload groceries may be unable to use this, although I expect there'll be an option to pay extra for a human to unload the groceries for you. Eventually there'll be an unloader robot inside the van, which can also load the van (rather than having a human load it). Endpoint tasks will be the killer app for robots, which are normally stuck in warehouses and factories; since if you have a human driver you might as well just pay that human to do the task at the endpoint, i.e. pay a professional to also drive there. Once we have fully-automated go-there-and-do-something systems, that can replace a huge swath of human jobs normally not considered for automation (plumbers etc.)
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Starting this fall, Kroger will partner with driverless car company Nuro to deliver groceries using its autonomous vehicles.
Anyone want to take the bet that this is nothing more than a me-too promotional stunt by a company feeling threatened by Amazon combined with a startup with no revenue trying to make themselves seem bigger than they are? How exactly is Kroger going to make money doing this since groceries are not exactly a high margin business to begin with and now they have to split profits with another company on the delivery? And hands up if you have ever actually heard of this partner company Nuro before this article given that they were founded in 2016.
The grocery store in our town is a Kroger and they can't even get good quality produce reliably in their stores. Something they are supposed to be good at already but somehow can't seem to manage. Yet I'm supposed to believe they are going to be delivering my groceries via driverless cars which aren't even really a thing yet? Right....
Kroger is a lazy second rate grocery chain who is reacting to more clever companies in a desperate bid to stay alive and somehow relevant. They are big so they'll be around for a while but I think they are just slowly circling the drain. Honestly I wouldn't mourn the loss of Kroger for even a minute.
When I was young, the smartly-uniformed milkman delivered all sorts of things up and down the garden path, and while he was doing that the bored horse moved the milk-float (some yards behind it) to align with the next house that had regular orders. People forget what was possible in a less techno-mad world.
With delivery vehicles, you only really have to worry about number 2). That should make the job significantly easier.
The majority of failure modes where a car kills its occupants also apply to killing individuals outside the vehicle. This includes vehicle to vehicle collisions, loss of control (traction), failure to recognize obstacles, insufficient time to react, other driver's unpredictable actions, and more. While you are correct that it does take some failure modes off the table, most of them still remain in some form or fashion.
You don't have to have some sort of AI "ethics" that has to judge whether to protect the people in the car or the people outside the car, it can always just "sacrifice itself".
That presumes it has sufficient situational awareness to make that possible. There is no evidence we have reached that happy state of affairs yet. Also bear in mind that people are not the only thing that need protecting. While lives should be paramount we don't need cars causing massive property damage either.
Limit them to say 30 km/h, just schedule the deliveries properly, and you reduce a lot of potential for accidents.
There isn't a single road in my town where the speed limit is as slow as 30km/h so all that would do is screw up traffic.
So testing things first with a safety driver seems pointless, i.e. it's basically development of the wrong type of vehicle.
Explain to me how you expect to develop a vehicle that can drive safely around humans before we've developed the robust logic and sensor systems to ensure they can drive more safely than a human. A vehicle that cannot keep itself safe reliably really shouldn't be on the road. Whether or not there is a human on board doesn't really change that fact. And since there isn't any way to actually test these devices safely around humans without having a human driver to step in when needed you need to account for that fact.
This will never happen. There will always be a human "backup" driver. Autonomous driving is a joke. You can get 90% there, but the 10% probably never will be doable.
Until 20 years ago, a horse-drawn cart carrying fresh produce from a nearby village would come into town about twice a week, people new the old guy and waited for him... so I guess the business model is sound.
When I was young, the smartly-uniformed milkman delivered all sorts of things up and down the garden path, and while he was doing that the bored horse moved the milk-float (some yards behind it) to align with the next house that had regular orders.
"When you were young"? Since milk delivery by horse hasn't happened since the 1940s I think you are making shit up or you are the only 80 year old on this site.
People forget what was possible in a less techno-mad world.
Just because they had cruder technology doesn't mean they were less enthusiastic about what they had.
Yes, because everybody in the whole world moved from horses to electric milk carts at exactly the same time you did.
And where exactly did milk get delivered by horse within the last 60 years?
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You seem nice. First time here? I can tell by your inaugural post that you will contribute great things to the discussion here. You're off to such a good start!
A holier than thou diatribe where they know the one true way it's everyone else that are idiots? Yeah I'd say that fits right in with the usual Slashdot comment.
Kroger share holder here.
Thank you for disclosing your bias up front. For the record I own shares in Amazon.
Kroger is growing. I wouldn't describe Kroger as desperate, but a well run business that is willing to change and evolve.
And I'm a customer of theirs and every indication I see indicates exactly the opposite. Just because they are making some profits right now doesn't make me optimistic about their future. Maybe they'll figure it out. Would benefit me if they did. But right now I really hate doing business with them because I can't depend on anything I buy from them that isn't in a box being of decent quality. Their produce is of wildly inconsistent quality and their meat counter is a roll of the dice too. Their staff in the checkout is unpleasant to deal with (many of them rather dumb) and slow. I can get boxed goods cheaper from Walmart and the stuff that isn't in a box is unpredictable. That's not a recipe for success in the long run.
Sears had the potential to be what Amazon is now. They had the warehouses, delivery network, and order processing capabilities. All they had to do was slap a customer friendly front end on the interface the people processing mail and phone orders used; then advertise it.
Ha! You think that was the problem Sears had? Sears lost out to Walmart and other competitors YEARS before Amazon became a serious threat. Walmart developed better logistics than Sears ever dreamed of decades ago. If success was just a matter of slapping a pretty front end on a website Amazon wouldn't be a thing. I'm an industrial engineer so I work in production and logistics. It's a hell of a lot harder than you are making it out to be.
Have you complained to corporate about the produce quality?
Yes and they don't give a shit. It's the only grocery store in town and they know it. The nearest competitor is a Walmart 6 miles away plus a few mom and pop specialty stores. But even when I've gone to Kroger's with more competition close by their produce (and meats) still aren't consistently good. We routinely get produce home that rots within a day or two (yes we're storing it properly) or that is tasteless. Just this week we bought some strawberries that had basically no taste. They were red and strawberry shaped but that's it. We've had squash that should last for a month or more on the counter turn out to be rotten inside. I don't care if the produce is pretty but I do care that it doesn't rot and that it actually has taste.
A car with a very lightweight collapsible frame -- so collapsible that it'd allow any occupants to be killed easily, imagine a car that practically disintegrates on impact -- is also the car least likely to kill someone it hits.
That has precisely nothing to do with the problems of navigating any vehicle safely which is the primary issue in driverless cars. The question is how to develop a car that can safely navigate around humans without involving humans in the process. The crash worthiness of a vehicle is an almost entirely separate issue.
Until we solve the mystery of how biological brains produce the phenomenon of self-awareness and true cognition, none of these so-called 'deep learning algorithms' will ever be able to function on the level of a human brain because they are fundamentally incapable of 'thinking' at all; your dog or cat is smarter than these so-called 'self driving cars'. Therefore all such vehicles will ultimately fail at being practical and/or will pose constant safety hazards to human life.
" . . . in our driverless future, we all need to pitch in and unload our own groceries." At least until Mr. Roboto, some future Asimo, is ready to take over that little chore. Of course, he's probably going to expect a tip. Come to that, this delivery cart might want one, too.
+1, Troll
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Yes, but we have charm and we know how to party up in here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Now with more “web” and “van”. I remember seeing those Webvan vans everywhere in the Bay Area. Might actually work this time since it’s not a company that has to build the full logistic infrastructure from the ground up.
Autonomous cars that transport people must satisfy two major safety requirements: 1) not kill or injure the people they are transporting and 2) not kill or injure other people on the road.
You missed the Third Law: 3) An Autonomous Car must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.