Autonomous delivery provider, Clevon has partnered with Lithuanian grocery chain, IKI to operate Europe’s first fleet of autonomous robot carriers (ARCs) on public roads.
The newly launched fleet consists of three driverless carriers operated by LastMile, which will offer daily commercial delivery services in Vilnius city centre.
The ARCs feature lockable compartments for both small and large orders. Together, the fleet of robots can deliver seven customer orders in one run from the IKI store on Mindaugas Street to homes in the city centre.
This deployment follows a pilot project in the Vilnius suburban district of Balsiai, which saw LastMile and Clevon operate the first driverless delivery robots in Lithuania.
Tadas Norušaitis, CEO and Co-founder of LastMile said:After a successful test, we are taking the next step – for the first time in Europe, as many as three autonomous carriers will be part of the traffic in city centre streets. We believe that these robots will give us a significant advantage in the delivery sector, as customers will receive their goods quickly, even in the city centre, and even during peak hours. Speed is becoming one of the most important criteria for shoppers when choosing a home delivery method – 95% of our customers buy goods with delivery within a few hours.
Over the next two months, the autonomous carriers will deliver shopping around the city centre, which is a significantly larger and busier area than that used in the pilot project.
The ARCs will travel at a maximum speed of 25 kilometres per hour and will safely navigate the streets using 360-degree cameras and sensors. They will also be remotely supervised by tele-operators.
Clevon's CEO, Sander Sebastian Agur said:Our team keeps proving that autonomous deliveries are here to stay, and we're expanding our operations from single vehicles to fleets in Europe, the US, and in the Middle East region. Clevon was the first in Europe to get permission to operate driverless carriers on public roads in 2020. Now, we're making history again by being the first to deploy a fleet of ARCs for commercial deliveries on Europe's public roads, right here in Lithuania. This is just the beginning!
