Ford has joined forces with US delivery service Postmates for a series of tests to find how businesses would interact with driverless delivery vehicles.
With a view to bring self-driving delivery trucks to the road, Postmates are using a set of Transit Connects that appear to be self-driving to see how people would react to a driverless delivery vehicle.
Ford and Postmates are currently testing the service in Miami and Miami Beach in conjunction with 70 businesses, and customers can take the option to select a self-driving research vehicle for their deliveries.
A driver sits behind the wheel of these test vehicles so that all goes smoothly, but customers will not be able to tell whether there is a driver present or not. The Transit Connects used have also been specially adapted with three separate lockers so that customers can collect their deliveries without interacting with anyone else’s.
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After the items are placed into the specific locker by the business, the van would then drive itself to its destination, where the customer would receive a text message with the code to unlock the locker containing their delivery.
Although the system is yet to fully operational with autonomous functions, Ford expects the setup to be ready by 2021 so that businesses could use the service in cities. There is no official word on whether this system would come to the UK.
