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Valeria Gómez Giraldo INGENIERÍA ELECTRÓNICA Noticia tomada de Texas Monthly

CC. 1020834268 UNIVERSIDAD EL BOSQUE Agosto 5 de 2020
AGOSTO 28 DE 2020

How Robots Are Helping One Texas Company Thrive During the Pandemic

The pandemic has dealt a crushing blow to the world of commerce, reducing a bustling
economy to levels of collapse not seen since the Depression. The aftershocks have rippled
across the food industry, in particular, disrupting industrial production and shuttering
restaurants, bars, and businesses that feed off them. But amid the economic carnage, a
number of businesses ended up benefiting from sudden, drastic changes in public behavior.
Some of these outliers were established brands even before the pandemic. Others, like Nuro,
a Silicon Valley robotics company that has deployed a fleet of driverless delivery vehicles in
Houston, were relatively unknown start-ups that found themselves suddenly in high
demand.

As recently as last fall, Nuro appeared to be years away from widespread adoption. The
company, which operated in Arizona and California, arrived in Houston in 2018 to test its
vehicles on this city. Though the cars were overseen by two human employees in the front
seat, the goal was to develop the world’s preeminent fully autonomous delivery service.

Last fall, only 3 percent of the nation’s households were placing frequent online orders for
grocery delivery. The low rate was attributed to shoppers’ concerns about higher prices
online and delivery drivers showing up late. In May of this year, however, that number had
skyrocketed to 33 percent, a stunning increase that—in even the best-case scenarios—was
expected to take many years to reach, not months. In Houston alone, Nuro has seen its
deliveries triple into the thousands since the pandemic turned in-person shopping into risky
activity. Suddenly, Nuro was no longer a novelty, but an important aid for many Houstonians
sheltering in place.

That same trend has been replicated by other automated delivery services during the
pandemic. “Investors over the past seven months have pumped at least $6 billion into more
than two dozen companies involved in autonomous delivery of goods and food, from drones
to heavy trucks,”

In addition to partnering with Kroger, the nation’s largest operator of traditional

supermarkets, Nuro delivers prescriptions from CVS and will soon deliver Domino’s pizza.
The company expects much of its new customer base to remain after the pandemic,
believing that quarantine has only amplified an existing trend toward on-demand grocery
delivery. Sola Lawal, a Nuro product operations manager based in Houston, cites high
customer appreciation scores as evidence that new users will remain loyal to the brand.
“Before the pandemic customers’ attitudes were like, ‘This is cool and now I have the
groceries I need,’” he said, “and now they’re more like, ‘Oh, thank God!’”