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The Grocery Robots Are Coming!
It’s not that I’m lazy; I’ve merely chosen the contemplative life. One of the annoyances I most dread is peeling my fat derriere off the couch to buy a few more palettes of Funyuns and Coke Zero. Thankfully, Silicon Valley is working on a solution.
Kroger has joined the robotics company Nuro to launch a self-driving grocery delivery pilot program in Scottsdale, AZ. The service debuts today, serving the zip code around one Kroger store (known in Arizona as Fry’s Food Stores). A customer simply orders their groceries online via the Fry’s website or smartphone app and a Nuro robot drops off the food at their home. The delivery charge is $5.95.
The Phoenix area has been a hub for driverless cars, with Uber, Apple, and Google’s Waymo using the area for testing. In my hometown of Mesa, AZ, I see the cars on nearly every drive I take. The only annoyance is getting stuck behind one because they tend to be overly cautious. (I’m an impatient jerk and their sensors don’t recognize middle fingers.)
In the two years since driverless cars took to the roads, there has been one fatal accident involving an Uber vehicle hitting a pedestrian. Uber quickly shut down their foundering program. The incident was a tragedy, however, that’s a much better safety record than a similar number of human-driven cars in the same timeframe.
Here’s a promo video of Nuro’s delivery robot in action:
(Not shown: roof-mounted laser cannons to disperse Antifa mobs.)
The only downside to the grocery delivery program is that the pilot Fry’s store is 10 miles from my house, well outside of robot range. So if anyone’s going to the store later, I’d appreciate some Funyuns and Coke Zero. (Just leave them on the porch; I’ll Venmo whatever it cost.)
Published in Technology
Will they deliver at 4am? Because that’s when I like to go.
The contemplative life? Right! I know people who are having groceries delivered the regular way and love it. They say even the produce picked is good! I just don’t know–I’m pretty picky about my produce. And Florida drivers are slow enough without adding driverless cars! Thanks for the post, Jon.
You didn’t give your address; I won’t be able to
doxhelp you.I eagerly await the next step in this process – when they only deliver to you the food that they know you would have ordered if you had been as nutritionally and socially conscious as those who program the robots.
How would that strategy benefit the grocery store?
This happens after Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act becomes law in the Kamala Harris administration.
Not available in “food deserts.”
White privilege, indeed.
For more, here’s a conversation we had about autonomous commercial vehicles after CES.
The grocery robots are here Mr. @exjon
I used to work for Sobeys which in Canada is the second largest grocery chain. Our Vaughan warehouse had robots doing much of our logistics work which used to be done by people.
Its obvious, the regulations will require you to buy whatever they have decided you need. And they will just do a quick transfer from your bank account, and you will never have to do anything. Just think, you can do whatever they decide you should do, without ever leaving your
cagehome! Yeah!Fry’s sells food now? (To the extent that either Funyuns or Coke Zero qualify as “food”)
He means robot food. Funyuns and Coke Zero are slang for memory chips and graphics processors.
Silly meatbag, Trix are for androids.
Soylent Green Fun-size Bars™
AZ has long had Fry’s food stores – decades before Fry’s Electronics was a thing. I don’t know if they are related.
How’d you get the superscript to work?
The ™ character is innately that size within a font set rather than being scaled through HTML or other formatting.
I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about.
Who takes the driver’s test? If a machine can drive without a license, why can’t I? Do machines have greater rights than people?
I do not like driverless cars. They will be used as justification to take away our freedom. Politicians (I’m guessing more from both parties but more from the democrats) will declare that robots are “safer” and will start only allowing robot cars to enter a city. The central planners’ dreams of finally getting mass public transportation will finally be realized. We will be controlled and told where we can go. You want to go to some remote place? Sorry, that is environmentally sensitive, no permission is allowed. You want to go to a government protest? Nope.
That is to come. But for now, I’m just offended by the effrontery of robots being allowed to drive, while I have to have a license and insurance.
Then again, my insurance is limited to $300,000 (or whatever). Robot programmer and the company that employs him have much deeper pockets. I might have found a new niche for my law practice.
Industrial Wizardry®.
® ™ © ah . I’ll just copy and paste.
Oh, that’s good. I’m stealing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Electronics This is pretty accurate, though it says the original Fry’s Grocery was based in CA. I lived in both states and only recall Fry’s Grocery stores in AZ. Maybe the grocery chain was in Northern CA; I lived in Southern CA. Short version: sons of the Fry’s Grocery patriarch started the electronics chain. That also explains the similarity of the logos. Fry’s Grocery chain was eventually sold to Kroger, though it continues to operate under the Fry’s name.
You have just explained one of Western United States’ great mysteries. Thank you.
Well it takes all the embarrassment out of buying Depends and self-lubing catheters. And you can stay in underwear.