Some Canadians will soon see autonomous vehicles (AVs) delivering their groceries. Loblaw, one of the country’s leading grocery store chains, is teaming up with tech start-up Gatik to roll out a fleet of AVs that will deliver products to residents in Toronto, the country’s largest city.
Gatik has already been testing grocery deliveries in Toronto with a modified Ford Transit 350 box truck that’s been outfitted with refrigeration units and lift gates, as well as the company’s proprietary autonomous self-driving software that can navigate on urban, suburban and highway routes.
Now that the pilot project has been successfully completed, the company will expand its fleet to five trucks. The fleet will operate up to seven days a week for 12 hours a day, making three runs a day. This will total 2,100 orders and more than 300 pallets a week. The trucks will follow five routes on public roads with fixed loading and delivery locations, delivering products from Loblaw’s automated picking facility—known as a micro fulfillment center, or MFC—to six retail locations in the Toronto area. The vehicles are expected to begin deliveries in January 2021. It will be the first autonomous delivery fleet in Canada.
The trucks will be equipped with almost 30 cameras and sensors, including radar, LiDAR and two GPS sensors. Before taking on delivery tasks, the trucks spend six weeks “learning” their routes. For additional safety, a human co-pilot will be in the vehicles.
Unlike other autonomous tech companies that focus on consumers, Gatik provides its services to retailers looking to make their supply chains more efficient by automating the “middle mile” transfer of goods from large distribution centers to local stores.
“Retailers know the biggest inefficiencies in their logistics operations often exist in the middle-mile, typically between automated picking facilities and retail locations,” said Gautam Narang, Gatik CEO and co-founder. “This is where Gatik lives and succeeds and is the reason we’re able to offer immediate value to our customers.”
Gatik’s focus on the middle mile has attracted Fortune 500 companies, such as Walmart in the United States, as well as investment capital. In fact, the company claims to have already delivered more than 30,000 autonomous orders across North America. The company has an ambitious plan to become a major player in the logistics business—akin to what Uber has done for personal transportation.
“The vast majority of our competitors are focusing on passenger transportation,” Narang said. “On one end of the delivery spectrum there are self-driving trucks that operate with a large payload at highway speeds, and on the other end there are sidewalk robots that operate at restricted speeds, have limited weight capacity and cover short distances. The middle mile is dramatically underserved, and we address this market need.”
Contactless delivery systems are becoming increasingly popular, thanks to an increase in e-commerce, which has only accelerated since COVID-19 upended markets. Loblaw and Gatik were already working on a partnership when the pandemic struck, which led to a surge in online grocery orders and deliveries through the grocery chain’s PC Express service. This gave the partners added incentive to pursue their autonomous delivery project.
“Our network swelled considerably, and we started doing significant volume out of our MFCs,” said Rishi Patel, senior manager, Vendor Management and Network Design. “If Loblaw and Gatik didn’t have a good partnership, or we weren’t as agile, then we would have never been able to support the COVID spike.”
In fact, Gatik claims to have seen a 30 to 35 percent increase in daily orders since the pandemic struck and expects that trend to continue even after COVID-19.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that contactless delivery is here to stay, and the mechanisms put in place during COVID-19 are likely to remain even after the coronavirus subsides. Loblaw and Gatik are leading the way in Canada with their innovative middle-mile autonomous delivery initiative.
Read more about how autonomous technologies are being deployed during the pandemic at Kar-go Autonomous Vehicle Begins Contactless Delivery to Care Homes.