In a Canadian first, a fully autonomous delivery vehicle with no safety driver onboard has been deployed on public roads in the Greater Toronto Area.
“These are surface streets with traffic lights, four-way intersections, three-way intersections,” and no shortage of aggressive drivers, Narang said.Narang said it has a 100-per-cent safety record with no accidents tracing back to the start of deployment on the Loblaw route in early 2020. But that does not mean the automated system has been flawless since the outset.
For the initial phase of the rollout, a safety passenger with access to an emergency stop button, as well as a chase vehicle, will take part in each autonomous run. Gatik said these human resources will eventually be removed and oversight handed over entirely to “remote supervisors.” As with its Loblaw project, Gatik’s collaboration with Walmart and its other partners focus on what is known as the middle-mile delivery market.Robert Love, head of the autonomous vehicle group at Canadian law firm BLG, said this segment of the AV market has the most momentum in Canada currently, largely because the vehicles can operate on fixed, repeatable routes.