Nuro Robotics - Valeria Gómez Giraldo
Nuro Robotics - Valeria Gómez Giraldo
Nuro Robotics - Valeria Gómez Giraldo
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,”