Nuro, which hoped to become a leading robotic last mile delivery company with a fleet of pod-sized modest speed delivery robots has announced it will switch to becoming a general autonomy stack provider, licencing that stack to other companies which want to make robocars, robotaxis, fancy driver-assist and other applications.
It’s easier to carry cargo than people. You don’t have to worry about the safety of the cargo and you’re not in a particular hurry, at least compared to passengers. You can go slower, and travel on more minor and less busy roads if you wish. If a left turn is too tricky, you won’t annoy anybody if you take an alternate route. You can limit your delivery area and otherwise constrain your problem so that it’s easier to solve.
The most prominent player is MobilEye, which is today mostly owned by Intel. MobilEye has an overwhelmingly dominant position supplying driver-assist to automakers and hopes to use that to sell them its self-driving suite. MobilEye also originally planned to operate a robotaxi fleet but cancelled those plans.Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Monday, September 16th
An unexpected customer for Nuro might be Tesla’s hoped-for robotaxi service Tesla’s “Supervised FSD” system is still many years behind Waymo and Cruise and even Nuro as a robotaxi service, but Tesla has also pre-sold almost half a million customers a future-delivered self-driving system.