British Self-driving startup has received a £10 million investment from online grocer Ocado and a partnership to develop autonomous food deliveries.
Wayve’s technology is expected to be used in a 12-month trial on Ocado’s busy London routes. A human driver will be present but will only oversee affairs.
“This is a recognition that we’re uniquely positioned to build a technology that can deliver for the last-mile delivery space as well adapt and scale globally,” says Alex Kendall, CEO of London-based Wayve.
A portion of Ocado’s delivery fleet – ever-present sites in more well-to-do areas of the country – will also be fitted with data collection devices to understand and learn how human drivers handle the traffic. Wayve will then train its own system using the gathered data.
“We’ve been impressed with Wayve’s approach to solving this most complex of challenges and are excited to accelerate our capabilities so that our retail partners globally can take advantage of them at the earliest opportunity,” says Alex Harvey, Ocado’s head of advanced technology.
Wayve will also begin a trial of autonomous delivery vans with Asda, another British supermarket chain in the capital next year.
For Ocado, however, investing in advanced technology is nothing new. Earlier this year, the company invested more than £10 million in Oxford-based autonomy startup Oxbotica, in order to help reduce the cost of last-mile delivery.
Ocado has also invested heavily into robots, with one of its warehouses running purely with robots.
Keyword: Self-Driving Startup Wayve Receives £10 Million from British Supermarket Ocado