On Monday, Uber (NYSE: UBER) announced a slew of new features and improvements to its ridesharing and Eats food delivery apps, including an upcoming pilot program for autonomous food delivery using robots.
The pilot is part of a partnership with tech startups Serve Robotics and Motional, which manufacture sidewalk-driving robots and autonomous vehicles. Uber Eats customers in the Los Angeles area will have the option to pick a robot or autonomous car in place of a human driver for orders in the coming weeks.
Serve's sidewalk-capable robots will be deployed in West Hollywood to deliver over short distances. In contrast, Motional's cars will be used for larger orders in Santa Monica.
"We'll be able to learn from both of those pilots what customers actually want, what merchants actually want and what makes sense for delivery as we start to integrate our platform with AV companies," an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. "The hope is that they're successful and that we learn over the coming months, and then figure out how to scale."
Uber's push to automate its business model has been a long-term plan. For several years, the company has openly discussed its desire to utilize drones and autonomous vehicles. Serve Robotics, which began as a subsidiary of Postmates specializing in robotic food delivery, and Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai (OTC: HYMTF) and Aptiv (NYSE: APTV), certainly possess the expertise and resources to push Uber closer to that mark.
Uber is far from the only company to pilot autonomous delivery; aside from Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) notorious air-drone delivery testing for retail deliveries, Grubhub (OTC: GRUB) and Domino's (NYSE: DPZ) have both piloted robotic food delivery programs. Domino's partnered with Nuro to test automated pizza delivery using the company's R2 robot in Houston, with customers in the testing area can opt for autonomous delivery similar to Uber Eats. Grubhub partnered with Russian tech company Yandex for its pilot, though the future of this program may be in question given Yandex's sanctioning by the Biden administration.
Uber investors didn't seem overly moved by the company's autonomous ambitions nor its other announcements, with shares remaining essentially flat through the beginning of the week. Uber shares slid 3% on Monday, recovering 1.7% by noon Tuesday.