Walmart Inc., the world's largest retailer, is looking to start delivering goods autonomously to customers, and it's partnering with Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle (AV) company Argo AI and the Ford Motor Co. to do so.
When it launches as a pilot program in Austin, Texas, Miami and Washington, D.C. later this year, the new service will be the first in the nation that spans multiple cities, Argo AI said. The service will use modified Ford Escape vehicles equipped with Argo's self-driving software and hardware to deliver goods and groceries to customers who request the service during checkout on Walmart.com.
And while Walmart's inventory includes items of varying sizes, only those that can fit in the back portion of the vehicle will be able to be delivered autonomously as Argo will have safety drivers in the front seats of the vehicles.
“Our focus on the testing and development of self-driving technology that operates in urban areas where customer demand is high really comes to life with this collaboration,” Bryan Salesky, founder and CEO of Argo AI, said in a press release. “Working together with Walmart and Ford across three markets, we’re showing the potential for autonomous vehicle delivery services at scale.”
Even though the service isn't being launched in Pittsburgh this year, Argo said it likely could come in the future should the pilot prove successful.
"As the technology evolves, I definitely think we could expect that (Pittsburgh) may be added to the list of commercial operations," Argo AI VP of Strategy Cynthia Kwon said. "But for today, it continues to be our development city and one of our primary development cities."
Kwon said Argo is hoping the different urban testing environments across the first three cities will allow the company to gauge consumer reaction to its product. It's accomplishing a similar goal with its Lyft partnership announced in July, which is seeing the ride-hailing platform test out self-driving vehicles for passengers in Miami.
Those efforts are also part of the company's larger efforts of persuading both potential partnering companies and consumers themselves that Argo's tech not only works, but that is ready for implementation in the real world.
"We're practicing like we're playing, and what we mean by that is right now, our cars, including in Pittsburgh, are operating like a ride-hail service and another set of cars are operating like they're in a goods delivery service," Alan Hall, Argo's communications director, said. "We actually have, surprise, an employee ride-hailing service that we've been running for 12 months, we're already doing that. We're basically dogfooding and using our own system, we built our own app and this is how we test the whole system before we add partners to our network."
