We've seen ground-based delivery drones before, although they're typically little things that are designed to travel on sidewalks along with pedestrians. Nuro, however, is different. The vehicle is made to go on the road like a regular car, and today it was announced that it's got US$92 million in Series A funding behind it.
Nuro, the company, was founded by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, both of whom were previously principal engineers with Google's self-driving car project (now known as Waymo). Other team members come from companies such as Apple, Uber, Tesla and GM.
Little in the way of technical details have been released regarding the vehicle, although it is claimed to be fully autonomous, built from ultra-light materials, about half the width of a passenger car, and intended for use within neighborhoods – so perhaps don't go looking for it on the freeway.
From the looks of things, cargo items are simply loaded into it at one location, and are then driven to a recipient at another location. In that way, it's not unlike some of the self-driving grocery-delivery vehicles we've seen.
"We started Nuro to make products that will have a massive impact on the things we do every day," says Ferguson. "Our world-class software, hardware, and product teams have spent the past 18 months applying their expertise to deliver on this mission. The result is a self-driving vehicle designed to run your errands for you."
There's no word on when the vehicle might actually enter commercial use. In the meantime, though, you can see it in action, in the video below.
Source: Nuro via IEEE Spectrum