The U.S. car manufacturer Ford has begun testing its new automatic food delivery service developed together with Postmates, a universal courier-based delivery network. Over 70 venues have already signed up for the service.
At this early testing stage, self-driving Ford Transit Connect vehicles will be receiving food parcels from restaurants and cafés located in Miami and Miami Beach. Each prototype vehicle will be equipped with three electronically-controlled lockers: two in the back and one to the side. Thus, the car will be able to make only three deliveries over the course of a single trip.
An important thing to note here is that the Ford engineer team is currently busy designing and optimizing the routine procedures for order pick-up and shipment, rather than the self-driving technology. The latter is actually already more or less advanced enough for the task.
Here is how it works: a client orders food. The restaurant employee gets the parcel ready and requests a unique Order ID for opening one of the car’s lockers. The employee then enters the code and puts the order into the corresponding locker. The client then gets a text message with the unlock code.
Right at the moment, the testing crew tries to estimate how long it would take for the cars to deliver food, how close they will be able to get to the clients’ destinations, how much time the clients will spend figuring out the interaction with the lockers and displays, whether three lockers are enough, etc.
Once successfully tested, the Ford automatic food delivery service will launch in 2021. That’s when Ford hopes to have enough self-driving Transit Connect vehicles ready.
Photo: Ford