A Los Angeles-based startup called Robomart is unveiling its self-driving robot shuttle that’s designed for grocery delivery.
Autonomous Grocery Delivery
The new model, called Robomart RM5, is a level-four autonomous vehicle that can carry up to 500 pounds. Designed for batch ordering, the bot consists of 10 individual climate-controlled lockers to hold customer orders.
The vehicle has a range of 112 miles and can reach speeds up to 25 mph. Each locker can hold up to 50 lbs of groceries. According to Interesting Engineering, it can also build multi-stop itineraries in real time using a mix of sensors, route planning, and AI-driven navigation.
Robomart co-founder and CEO Ali Ahmed told TechCrunch that the robots are part of an on-demand delivery business model similar to that designed by food delivery platforms. Retailers partnering with Robomart can open storefronts on the app.
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“We see this as building our own autonomous marketplace,” Ahmed said. “That is something that is pretty unique in this space, an autonomous marketplace for on-demand delivery using self-driving robots.”
What’s the difference between Robomart and other food delivery services? One major difference is the price, as customers of Robomart will pay a flat $3 delivery fee.
“Our robots bring the cost of a delivery down by up to 70%,” Ahmed said. “That is a critical difference. If you are paying a driver $18 an hour, your cost, just for that driver, is $9 to $10 per delivery.”
Additionally, rather than simply delivering one order at a time, Robomart sequences several deliveries at once to improve efficiency.
The company plans to begin onboarding retailers in Austin, Texas, over the next few months. The delivery service will launch later this year.
“To give them this incredible proposition of $3 and no other charges, just [price] markups in themselves can be prohibitively expensive,” Ahmed said. “They don’t even realize they are paying that markup and the other fees and the tips. This makes [our model] very attractive to the retailers and customers.”
