Due to the expected shortage of employees to deliver pizzas, Domino’s Pizza has been searching for new and innovative ways to deliver their pizzas to customers’ homes, making use of Artificial Intelligence. This led to multiple tests of the most innovative ways to deliver Domino’s pizzas.
In 2016, DRU already made its entrance in Australia and New-Zealand. DRU, named as Domino’s Robotic Unit, is one of these solutions to deliver pizza without someone to drive him. As you can see on the picture above, DRU is a relatively small, self-driving vehicle in which a heated box is positioned. Therefore, DRU can deliver warm pizzas at busy locations. This makes him very suitable to use in cities. He can navigate on its own, making use of his GPS system which is linked to Google Maps. He chooses the best route and with the help of his on-board sensors, he can avoid obstacles on his way. DRU can only be opened by the code on the mobile phone of the orderer. Do you also want to meet DRU? Then I have good news, tests with DRU are already started in the Netherlands! If you’re lucky, you even have the opportunity to meet him in Rotterdam by ordering at Domino’s Pizza.
But DRU is not the only innovative robot that can deliver your pizzas… Pizzas can also fly nowadays. The first pizza (pizza-peri-peri chicken) has been delivered by air with the help of the Domicopter. This Domicopter is a drone of Domino’s Pizza and has been tested in New-Zealand. The drone is useful to avoid traffic jams and includes a heated box for the pizzas as well. Another great innovative way of Domino’s is the use of self-driving cars to deliver the pizzas. With the help of Ford, Domino’s is testing these delivery cars in the US right now. You can track the car with your pizza on your smartphone. With the unique code on your app, you can open the door to grab your pizzas.
Domino’s Pizza is very curious of how their customers will react to all these new innovative delivery ways. Driverless deliveries has been new and many people will be stunned if they would see DRU delivering their pizzas. I think this could be the new hype and will increase the customer experience at Domino’s Pizza! Would you like to see DRU in front of your door with your favourite pizza?
Sources:
http://fortune.com/2017/08/29/dominos-ford-pizza-self-driving-autonomous/
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/29/16213544/dominos-ford-pizza-self-driving-car
https://zelfrijdendeauto.com/dominos-pizza-zet-zelfrijdende-robot-in/
Thank you for the interesting blog post. I wasn’t aware of this new technology and I’m very surprised! As a pizza fan I might consider to order Domino’s Pizza if they use DRU in the future. For now, I have to trust the pizza deliverer to bring my pizza on time.
In my opinion, the two technological innovations seem to be great, but I have some serious questions about their performance. In your blog post, you mentioned that the DRU robots are very suitable in the cities. As you can see on the photo, these robots are relatively small and very compact. You can almost compare them to a toy car for kids, where they can sit in. That is my first remark on this robot. The size makes the DRU very susceptible. You won’t let your child drive in a toy car in the city, right? It will be too dangerous, people probably won’t notice you in traffic, even though the robot can ´´see´´ them.
Secondly, you wrote that the DRU can only be opened by the code on the mobile phone of the orderer. This will cause a problem if the code doesn’t work, the battery died or the door of the DRU can’t open properly. Thirdly, when the technology will let the pizza orderer down, the customer service rate will sink.
Besides the DRU robot, you also mentioned another new technology, named the Domicopter. This is a drone of Domino´s pizza. There is a booming popularity of drones, which will lead to more traffic in the air. Since drones are quite expensive, there became more competition and there are cheaper drones on the market right now. This currently causes some risks and challenges which was found in an article: ´´For the Pentagon, this poses two challenges: the ubiquity of the cheap crafts is a potential risk to base security, and also raises questions about the reliability on the drones themselves as a military tool.´´ (Kelsey, 2017). Using more drones in the air is therefore questionable.
Bibliography
Kelsey D. Atherton (2017). Consumer drones are causing problems for the military. Retrieved on October 23, 2017, from http://www.popsci.com/pentagon-has-problem-with-drones