Cute, but i think mainly a publicity stunt. You couldnt trust that thing to be by itself unless it was a really safe small town or nice suburb.
For a pizza chain, Domino’s actually has a pretty rich history of innovation. It’s embraced social media, created a one-click Easy Order button and even built a delivery car that has its own pizza oven. Now it’s looking at robots. More specifically: delivery robots. What you see here is DRU (Domino’s Robotic Unit), an autonomous delivery vehicle built in collaboration with Australian technology startup Marathon Targets that Domino’s says is the first of its kind. It’s filled with thousands of dollars worth of military robotics tech, but its covert mission has been to deliver fresh pizza to the residents of Queensland.
DRU is still in the prototype stage, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been busy. Domino’s worked with the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads to ensure it met all the requirements to be set loose on the streets. It uses LIDAR, the same technology utilized by self-driving cars, to identify the surrounding environment and has built-in GPS tracking technology that syncs with Google Maps. It’s actually very similar to Starship Technologies’ eponymous delivery robots, which will soon hit the streets of London.
