The largest self-driving groceries home delivery trial in the UK is started by Asda and Wayve.
Asda and Wayve, a start-up in autonomous vehicle technology, have teamed to deliver groceries to consumers.
The Park Royal superstore in London will be the first to use autonomous vehicles to deliver shopping orders to customers.
The year-long trial is the largest in the UK, with a catchment area of 72,000 homes in London.
In the largest autonomous grocery home shopping delivery trial in the UK, Asda customers can have their groceries delivered by a Wayve self-driving van starting today.
The store will be able to autonomously deliver food to a catchment area of over 170,000 residents across 72,000 residences in London thanks to the year-long study, which is being conducted in collaboration with Wayve.
The Wayve autonomous vehicles, which can drive themselves to customers’ houses, will complement Asda’s current online delivery service at the Park Royal superstore in West London.
Customers of Asda Park Royal can place their orders for next-day delivery online as normal, selecting from the complete selection of online products and a delivery time that works for them; the only difference is that they might be chosen at random to have their purchase delivered in a self-driving car.
When making deliveries throughout the 12-month trial, a Wayve safety driver in charge and an Asda coworker will both be in the car. The groceries will be delivered from the shop to the customer’s door in a self-driving car, but Asda employees will load and unload them there.
With over 20% of the market share and weekly deliveries of more than 800,000 items, Asda ranks as the second-largest online supermarket in the UK.
This is the first study in the UK that can start up immediately in a business setting without changing how the internet delivery systems of the store are run. Through this trial, Wayve’s automated driving technology can be easily incorporated into Asda’s regular business operations.
Wayve’s ‘AV2.0’ technology trains its AI software to drive in any scenario by learning from experience using machine learning. This leads to AV technology that can autonomously drive anywhere in its urban domain, even to locations it has never been to before, without being geofenced by highly accurate maps or pre-defined routes.
The technology is intended to continuously scan the road, spotting potential dangers and taking the most secure actions.
Asda will be able to reach its Park Royal customers starting on the first day of the trial by using this technology to drive wherever is allowed in the authorised region.
The debut comes after a two-year collaboration between the retail behemoth and an emerging startup in the field of autonomous vehicles, which intends to set the bar for creating a self-driving car solution for the grocery industry.
“Asda has long recognised the value of bringing tech innovation to the online grocery sector, and we are always looking at new and innovative partnerships to improve delivery options for customers,”
said Simon Gregg, Senior Vice President of eCommerce at Asda. We think autonomous technology offers a fascinating chance to influence delivery in the future, not just at our Park Royal shop but across our entire national operation.
Through our cooperation with Wayve, we are testing this technology to see how it may help our busy retail operations, as well as adding a special, dependable and effective option for Asda customers to have a wide variety of products delivered to their homes.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Asda on the largest urban autonomous grocery delivery trial in Europe,” said Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve.
The trial serves as an illustration of how fleet owners’ needs can be met via autonomy. It’s fantastic to see our AV technology, which we started building more than five years ago, bringing genuine value to Asda’s everyday operations.
“We value the foundation we are laying with Asda for future autonomous grocery delivery. Trials like this one hasten the deployment process.
They ensure that companies like Asda are ready to deploy AVs at scale while also providing the learnings needed to bring the benefits of AV technology to customers sooner.
This pilot of autonomous grocery delivery is the most recent step in the relationship between Asda and Wayve, which started in 2021. The Park Royal shop is the first to use this technology, but should the trial be expanded to other areas, Wayve will be able to provide autonomous delivery in further Asda sites.
