Domino's Is About To Unleash Autonomous Pizza Delivery

In recent years, Domino's has seemed focused on changing the pizza delivery experience. Whether that was through creating apps that could handle placing orders through services like Slack or deploying AI that's capable of checking the quality of cooked pizza, Domino's has been dipping its hand into a lot of different honey pots in search of ways to perfect its business. Today, the company announced that it will soon get the ball rolling on one of its biggest initiatives yet: Autonomous pizza delivery.

Domino's has announced a partnership with Nuro that will see the two companies delivering pizzas in driverless vehicles later this year. The test will kick off in Houston, though for the moment we don't have a more specific launch date.

Nuro seems to be a perfect partner for this endeavor, as its fleet of autonomous vehicles have been delivering things like groceries and dry cleaning in the Houston area since March of this year. The Nuro R2 will be the vehicle used for these deliveries, though at the start at least, it sounds like some Houston deliveries will still be carried out by actual human drivers.

Domino's says that select customers who place an online order with a participating store will have the chance to opt for autonomous delivery. Customers who take Domino's up on its offer will be able to track the delivery car's location using the Domino's app and, when it arrives, will unlock the car and retrieve their food using a unique PIN code.

This isn't the first time that Domino's has explored the idea of autonomous delivery. Back in 2017, Domino's started testing autonomous delivery in Michigan, so now it seems like its ready to expand that test to other regions. We'll keep an ear to the ground for word on an actual launch date for Domino's autonomous testing, so stay tuned for that.