Dive Brief:
- H-E-B is piloting autonomous vehicle delivery from a store in Austin, Texas, the grocer confirmed in an email to Grocery Dive.
- The robots have been delivering select orders of grocery items through Favor, the H-E-B-owned delivery app offering groceries, restaurant meals, alcohol and household items, from the Mueller H-E-B store since May, the grocer said.
- The pilot marks the latest effort by a grocer to test autonomous vehicle delivery.
Dive Insight:
While several grocers have tested bot delivery over the last few years, autonomous delivery is still rare in the grocery industry.
H-E-B partnered with autonomous vehicle maker Avride, which is headquartered in Austin, for the pilot. The bots have a delivery radius of roughly one mile and service customers living in the Austin Mueller District of the city.
With the pilot, customers can get 10 small items delivered by the bots between 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, Chron reported.
Avride’s website says that its delivery robot can hold six 16.5-inch pizzas and five 1.5-liter bottles. The bot uses sensors, lidar and cameras to navigate and has cameras that blur faces and license plates to ensure privacy, according to the company. The robots travel up to five miles per hour and can cover 31 miles on a single charge.
The bots are a familiar sight to people in the Mueller neighborhood. Last spring, Avride bots started ferrying food from restaurants to delivery customers, according to local news station KXAN.
H-E-B said it does not have expansion plans to share about the pilot.
Last summer, Favor added a quick delivery option that lets customers get up to 15 grocery items in 45 minutes or less.
Save Mart and Erewhon Market have also piloted sidewalk delivery robots in recent years as several tech companies, including Uber, look to make autonomous vehicles mainstream.
