Autonomous food delivery trials begin in London

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In the first UK trial of its kind, online grocery shoppers in the London Borough of Greenwich are having food delivered to their homes by driverless trucks.

The trial is being carried out as part of the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment), which is a wider autonomous car initiative led by TRL. The trial also involves the technology arm of online grocer Ocado.

During the trials, a self driving delivery vehicle, known as CargoPod, is delivering food to around one hundred customers around Greenwich’s Royal Arsenal Riverside development.

Developed by Oxford University spinout Oxbotica, CargoPod is guided by an autonomy software system called Selenium that enables real-time, accurate navigation, planning and perception in dynamic environments. The pod is able to carry a total of 128kg of groceries at a time.

Customers taking part in the trial order from a choice of three free gift hampers. The CargoPod is then loaded with several customers’ orders at a hub location, and a specially developed fleet management system known as Caesium is used to generate a delivery route. The CargoPod then travels autonomously along the route, stopping at customers’ homes, and alerting them to come and collect their groceries.

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