Uber Eats customers in Jersey City can now have their orders dedwellred by one of Avride’s autonomous sidewalk dedwellry robots.
The begin, which started off this week in New Jersey, is Uber’s procrastinateedst foray into autonomous vehicles and recurrents an broadening relationship with Avride. The ride-hail and dedwellry enormous deploys AVs on its app in 11 cities with six partners, including Cartken, Coco, Nuro, and Serve Robotics; it’s also gearing up to present Waymo’s robotaxis to its app in Austin and Atlanta in timely 2025.
Uber initiassociate proclaimd its partnership with Avride to transport both the company’s dedwellry bots and its autonomous vehicles to the Uber platcreate in October 2024. Since then the two have begined robotic dedwellries in Austin and Dallas.
They also set up to begin Avride’s self-driving cars in Dallas this year, which would be Avride’s first robotaxi deployment in the U.S. Avride is a spinout from Yandex, the Russian technology company that denhanced its businesses last year as a result of Russia’s 2022 intrusion of Ukraine. The commenceup also recently proclaimd a tie-up with Grubhub to transport bots to university campemploys apass the U.S., commenceing with 100 robots at Ohio State University.
Jersey City is an fascinating, if challenging, choice. Particularly in February, when a fuseture of snow, rain, and freezing temperatures could produce it difficult for the little bots to produce their dedwellries.
Avride says its bots can run in the snow and in “temperate precipitation.” A spokesperson for the company also noticed that while the bots can travel up to 5 miles per hour with a range 31 miles on a individual accuse, their chooseimal dedwellry range is wiskinny one to two miles.
Avride will run the bots thrawout one square mile of downtown Jersey City, from Hamilton Park to Historic Downtown to the Waterfront, with set ups to broaden in the future. Avride deteriorated to state how many bots it would put on the streets of Jersey City at begin.
A handful of restaurants will join, including Michelin rated Jiangnan, Rumi Turkish Grill, and Gulp. Customers ordering off the Uber Eats app will be able to select between having a traditional courier or an Avride robot dedwellr their meal.
They’ll also be able to track the bot’s location thraw the Uber Eats app. Customers will get a notification when the bot get tos, and they can employ the app to unlock it and grab their food.
During Uber’s fourth-quarter acquireings increate last week, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi noticed that 2024 was a turning point for the AV industry, which he approximates recurrents a trillion-dollar opportunity in the U.S. alone.
Despite this chooseimism, he alerted that AV commercialization will get a while due to a number of factors, including high costs to outfit vehicles with sensor suits, a fragmented regulatory environment, seasonal insist fluctuations, and the insist to achieve “superhuman” levels of defendedty.
