Mountain View-based Nuro this month became the second company in the state to receive a driverless testing permit.
The robotics company soon plans to start testing its driverless delivery vehicles in Los Altos, Mountain View and surrounding cities with free deliveries in partnership with local retailers. The permit – the first to allow testing of a self-driving vehicle without a driver or passenger – grants Nuro permission to take its R2 vehicles on the roads of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
“Putting our driverless R2 delivery vehicles on the road in California will be an important first for our company and the self-driving industry,” chief legal and policy officer David Estrada said in a press release. “But it is just a glimmer of what is to come.”
Nuro’s custom-built R2 vehicles, which drive at a maximum speed of 25 mph, are designed to deliver groceries and other packages. The company’s Toyota Prius vehicles have been on Mountain View roads before, but those vehicles also have human operators monitoring the cars’ systems, whereas the R2 vehicle has no room for drivers or passengers.
Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu founded the company in 2016. Both formerly worked at Google as principal engineers on its self-driving car project. Their hope that Nuro would incorporate robotics’ benefits into daily life “has never felt more real” than it does during the COVID-19 pandemic, Estrada said in a press release.
“While we have always believed that self-driving delivery vehicles would improve road safety and provide valuable convenience to consumers, we did not foresee our service helping to keep Americans safe from contagion,” Estrada added. “But the COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the public need for contactless delivery services.”
It is unclear when Nuro’s testing will begin, given the current statewide shelter-in-place order, but the company plans remote community engagement activities with Mountain View’s first responders, the press release stated.
Set to take place over the next few months, the activities will educate law enforcement and first responders about interacting with Nuro vehicles on public roads.
“Nuro is actively looking at opportunities within our community to begin making test deliveries that have the greatest impact,” Estrada told the Town Crier. “When the time is right, and we can ensure the utmost safety of our employees, we will resume plans to test R2 under this permit.”
For more information on Nuro, visit nuro.ai.
