San Francisco tourists, Phoenix suburbanites and now Canadian bacon — the list of driverless cargo keeps growing.
Gatik AI Inc., a California-based autonomous driving startup focused on middle-mile deliveries, said today that it is taking the humans out of a 7-mile truck delivery route it runs for grocery giant Loblaw Companies Ltd., Canada’s largest retailer. Five-year-old Gatik has been operating driverless trucks in Arkansas for more than a year as part of a partnership with Walmart, but this is its first fully autonomous foray north of the border. The Canadian leg runs from a Loblaw fulfillment center northwest of downtown Toronto to one of the company’s nearby Real Canadian Superstores.
“This is the outcome of what we’ve been doing the last few years,” said Gatik CEO Gautam Narang. “Four-way intersections, bicyclists, pedestrians — the truck encounters all those things.”
