US regulators have this week approved the deployment of 5 000 autonomous electric vehicles in Houston, Texas, for use in local delivery services.
Nuro, the company developing the driverless pod, is a California-based start-up founded by former Waymo (Google’s autonomy project) engineers Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, with a team cherrypicked from the industry’s leading names like Apple, Uber, Tesla and GM.
The little delivery robot designed by Nuro is called R2. At first glance, it looks like a futuristic minivan, until you see it with a reference for scale – R2 is about half the size of a conventional small car, and features no passenger seats and no steering wheel. Instead, it has been designed to carry goods with top-hinged cargo doors for easy access.
After three years of discussions, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has approved the commercial use of the all-electric R2, with support already in by companies like Walmart and Domino’s Pizza.
Nuro’s all-electric low-speed R2 will be restricted to specific routes and streets with full-time human monitoring, and since it’s not classified as a passenger vehicle, it isn’t required to fulfil all standards and safety requirements, omitting basics such as rear view mirrors and a windshield.
In turn, the NHTSA benefits from real-time data concerning the use of robots on public roads, which will help in legislating further use of autonomous AI-driven vehicles in the future.
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) requires cars to have basic human controls such as steering wheels, pedals and sideview mirrors. Nuro says the R2 is the first autonomous vehicle to have been granted a special exemption from these federal requirements, which means it can start operating its driverless delivery vehicles on public roads.
Nuro has the exemption for two years on a conditional basis, and is required to submit reports on the AV driving system and provide proper notice to communities where the R2 will be deployed. The exemption allows Nuro to produce and deploy no more than 5 000 R2 vehicles during the two-year exemption period.
Founded in 2016, Nuro has been valued at $2.7 billion and secured $940 million in funding last year from SoftBank Group Corporation.
Compared to early designs, the Nuro R2 boasts 65% increased cargo space and a bigger battery pack onboard for operation throughout the day. And yes, they’ve thought about the most important bits – temperature control ensures the pizza arrives warm and grocery perishable goods fresh.
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