If you live in Houston and order some Domino’s this week, you get might just meet a robot.
Back in 2019, the country’s largest pizza chain partnered with the driverless vehicle company Nuro, and now that relationship has borne fruit: a pilot program that will see Nuro’s autonomous vehicles delivering food for customers in the Texas city.
Here’s how it works: customers order and pre-pay for their food, and can track the delivery’s progress via text alerts. The small vehicle, dubbed R2, chugs along until it reaches the customer, who meets them, punches in a PIN code, and the pie is presented, hot and fresh.
Dennis Maloney, Domino’s senior vice president and chief innovation officer, said in a statement, “This program will allow us to better understand how customers respond to the deliveries, how they interact with the robot and how it affects store operations.”
He added, “The growing demand for great-tasting pizza creates the need for more deliveries, and we look forward to seeing how autonomous delivery can work along with Domino’s existing delivery experts to better support the customers’ needs.”