SCOTTSDALE, Arizona -- At a time when big-box retailers are trying to offer the same conveniences as their online competitors, the biggest U.S. grocery chain is testing the use of driverless cars to deliver groceries in a Phoenix suburb.Kroger's pilot program launched Thursday morning with a robotic vehicle parked outside one of its own Fry's supermarkets in Scottsdale. A store clerk loaded the back seat with full grocery bags. A man was in the driver's seat and another was in the front passenger seat with a laptop. Both were there to monitor the car's performance.Under the self-driving service, shoppers can order same-day or next-day delivery online or on a mobile app for a flat rate of about $6. After the order is placed, a driverless vehicle will deliver the groceries curbside, requiring customers to be present to fetch them. The vehicles will probably be opened with a numeric code.Currently, Kroger is operating with Toyota Prius vehicles. During the next phase of testing in the fall, deliveries will be made by a completely autonomous vehicle with no human aboard.Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., is partnering with Nuro, a Silicon Valley startup founded by two engineers who worked on autonomous vehicles at Google. "Our goal is to save people time, while operating safely and learning how we can further improve the experience," Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson said in a statement.The Google autonomous vehicle project is called Waymo, which started a similar pilot program last month at Walmart stores in Phoenix. In that case, self-driving vehicles transport customers to and from their selected Walmart location to pick up online grocery orders.That is not the only venture Waymo has in metropolitan Phoenix. Waymo has been trying out a service where bus and light rail riders can order an autonomous car to their nearest transit stop. Employees with Valley Metro, the agency that manages Phoenix-area transit lines, are currently serving as test riders. The project, started earlier this month, has Waymo employees gathering data from test drives, the agency said.Arizona continues to be a testing ground for self-driving technology, despite a fatal crash involving an autonomous vehicle earlier this year.A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a woman in March in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. The 49-year-old was crossing a darkened road outside of a crosswalk. But a National Transportation and Safety Board investigation showed the backup driver had been streaming a television show for more than 40 minutes before the accident, while the vehicle was in autonomous mode.Uber later ended the testing of self-driving cars in Arizona. But the company has since relaunched its autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh.<doc-sep>Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup focused on local deliveries, has partnered with 135-year-old grocery retailer Kroger to offer same-day deliveries. The two have yet to announce which market this will be live in, but the plan is to launch the several-month-long pilot this fall. Nuro’s intent is to use its self-driving technology in the last mile for the delivery of local goods and services. That could be things like groceries, dry cleaning, an item you left at a friend’s house or really anything within city limits that can fit inside one of Nuro’s vehicles. Nuro has two compartments that can fit up to six grocery bags each. When it came to going to market, Nuro co-founder and President Dave Ferguson told me groceries were most exciting to him. And Kroger particularly stood out because of its smart shelf technology and partnership with Ocado around automated fulfillment centers. “With the pilot, we’re excited about getting more experience interacting with real customers and understanding exactly what they want,” Ferguson said. “The things they love about it, the things they don’t love as much. As an organization for us, it’s also very valuable for us to have to exercise our operational muscle.” Throughout the pilot program, Nuro will be looking to see how accurate its estimated delivery times are, how the public reacts to the vehicles and how regular, basic cars interact with self-driving ones. The pilot will be live in just one market, but Kroger has 2,800 stores nationwide, so Nuro sees the partnership as an opportunity to reach the vast majority of America. Kroger already offers same-day delivery to 75 percent of its customers. With Nuro on board, the idea is to deploy the self-driving cars in areas where Kroger has yet to offer delivery services. “We want to be available to every single customer of ours,” Kroger Chief Digital Officer Yael Cosset told TechCrunch. On the customer side, the experience will surely be different from what they’re used to. Currently, Kroger customers expect the grocery delivery drivers to bring their items to their front door. With Nuro’s vehicles, they’ll only go as far as curbside. “This is an area where we’re going to learn a lot from the pilot,” Cosset said. “We have theories and assumptions about high density and low density and we want to see how that plays out.” Cosset went on to describe how he doesn’t see the current model for delivery and autonomous vehicle-powered delivery as mutually exclusive. “We believe they’re complementary,” Cosset said. “We may realize the optimal time to use autonomous vehicles is between 10 – 11 in the morning and the rest of the day have a fully staffed model.” Down the road, Nuro will continue looking at additional partners for its local delivery ambitions. Although Nuro is excited about the partnership with Kroger, it’s not an exclusive one. “Given we’re a startup, we can’t afford to put our eggs in one basket,” Ferguson said. “But we do have the full intention of going big with Kroger and trying to do as much as we can together.” Other potential partners for Nuro may include those like local dry cleaners, bakeries and florists. “I think the only way realistically to do that is to provide a way for customers to access all of these local services through one spot,” Ferguson said. “That way, we’ll be able to collectively provide this local community delivery service and have some way to get all these local businesses within the same experience.”<doc-sep>U.S. supermarket operator Kroger said it will start testing driverless grocery delivery on Thursday with technology partner Nuro at a single Fry's Food Store in Scottsdale, Arizona. Kroger and rival Walmart each have teamed up with autonomous vehicle companies in a bid to lower the high-cost of "last-mile" deliveries to customer doorsteps, as online retailer Amazon.com rolls out free Whole Foods delivery for subscribers to its Prime perks program. "Kroger wants to bring more customers the convenience of affordable grocery delivery," said Kroger Chief Digital Officer Yael Cosset, who added that the test will also gauge consumer demand for the service. The first phase of the test will use a fleet of Toyota Prius cars equipped with Nuro technology. Those cars have seats for humans who can override autonomous systems in the event of an error or emergency. Nuro's R1 driverless delivery van, which has no seats, will begin testing this autumn, the companies said. "While we compete final certification and testing of the R1, the Prius will be delivering groceries and helping us improve the overall service," a Nuro spokeswoman said. Self-driving car delivery from the Fry's store will cost $5.95 with no minimum order. It is only available at addresses within the store's zip code of 85257, Kroger said. Walmart and Alphabet Inc's self-driving car company Waymo are partnering to test a service that shuttles Phoenix shoppers to stores to collect online grocery orders. (Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien) Related Video:<doc-sep>
Enlarge Image Nuro When Kroger and Nuro first announced their driverless grocery delivery partnership, the two companies didn't say where the pilot program would kick off. Now, we know -- it's Scottsdale! Kroger and Nuro announced this week that the autonomous delivery service has launched in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's limited to a single Fry's Food Stores location at the moment, but the program has already started, so people who live nearby can start placing grocery orders and they'll arrive in a driverless vehicle. Using the Fry's Food Stores app or website, you can place grocery orders and check whether or not there's an open slot for autonomous delivery. If there is, you can book either same-day or next-day delivery, and boom -- an autonomous vehicle will arrive at your home. Most of the press surrounding this partnership has focused on Nuro's R1 driverless vehicle, which is a pod-like vehicle built solely for carrying things. While the R1 will be included in this program, it won't start making deliveries until the fall. For now, a self-driving Prius will show up at your door instead. That's a little less fun. When the R1 launches, you'll have to enter a code on the side of the vehicle, which will reveal the groceries hidden inside. It's unclear how the process works with the Prius. Thankfully, it's not too expensive to have one of Nuro's vehicles bring your groceries home. The delivery itself will cost $5.95, and there's no minimum of groceries. So if you only want to order a 2-liter of soda, go for it.