Autonomous Cars To Deliver Foodstuffs To People Affected By COVID-19 In The US

JAKARTA - A startup company that develops autonomous or driverless cars, Optimus Ride, has finally paved its way to help deliver food to residents in need in Washington DC, United States (US).

Reporting from venturebeat.com, May 28, A total of three autonomous cars will be deployed to the Yards region, namely the waterfront in Washington, DC, USA starting this week. The car delivers food boxes for a week to families in need. Meanwhile, the food delivered is provided by the Neighborhood Restaurant Group and Arcadia Center.

Later, the car will distribute food to families every week, transporting a total of 5,000 boxes of food.

Similar steps were also followed by autonomous vehicle companies such as Cruise, Pony.ai, Hyundai-Aptiv Autonomous Driving Joint Venture and Nuro. They deployed a small fleet to transport foodstuffs and other basic necessities to be given to the people affected by the COVID-19.

Even so, the robot driving this car must be disinfected, to minimize the risk of spreading the corona virus in some cases.

Prior to this pagebluk, the autonomous cars from Optimus Ride were already operating in the Yard area, which of course is still under the supervision of remote staff. However, as these pagebluks became increasingly alarming, the startup eventually planned to expand food delivery to commercial services for residents, including transportation and restaurants, retail, and business delivery.

"Together with many other companies and institutions, we have been monitoring the pandemic from the very beginning through its global spread. In accordance with guidance from health and state officials, we are transitioning companies from optional work-from-home to mandatory," said Optimus Ride CEO Ryan Chin. in its official statement.

"On Monday, March 15, we decided together with our partners to suspend passenger operations at all our locations," added Chin.

Unfortunately, until now there has been no explanation regarding the innards of the autonomous car. Chin, who previously led the City Science Initiative at MIT Media Lab, said the Optimus Ride car will one day be capable of becoming a level 4 autonomous car. This car, he added, will operate with human input, but remain under surveillance, and in a specific location.

For information, Optimus Ride has started paving since October 2017, when its partnership with real estate developer LStar Ventures brought self-driving car services to the 1,550-acre Union Point neighborhood in Weymouth, south of Boston.

The MIT project became one of the first to obtain a driverless license from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation about four years ago, with testing of its more than 25 fleet of cars starting at Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park in the Boston Harbor District.