Walmart has been relying on self-driving trucks with no human driver on board to ferry shipments from warehouses to retail stores in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The self-driving trucks come from a Silicon Valley firm called Gatik, which specializes in helping companies ship goods from fulfillment centers to physical stores. Since 2019, Walmart has been using Gatik’s self-driving vehicles on test delivery routes in Arkansas. However, a human safety driver was always at the helm.
On Monday, the companies announced the trucks now operate daily without a human on board. “Gatik’s deployment with Walmart in the state represents the first time that an autonomous trucking company has removed the safety driver from a commercial delivery route on the middle mile anywhere in the world,” the companies claimed.
To demonstrate this, Gatik uploaded a video, showing their self-driving truck in action. As you can see, the vehicle drives without a human inside and can navigate the roads in both day and night. According to Bloomberg, the vehicles will also drive on a 7-mile route to make deliveries 12 times a day.
Gatik says the company began transitioning to “full driverless operations” for Walmart this past August. The vehicles operate seven days per week on public roads, which has helped local Walmart Neighborhood Market stores increase the speed of fulfilling e-commerce orders to customers.
“Our deployment in Bentonville is not a one-time demonstration,” said Gatik CEO Gautam Narang in the announcement. “These are frequent, revenue-generating, daily runs that our trucks are completing safely in a range of conditions on public roads, demonstrating the commercial and technical advantages of fully driverless operations on the middle mile.”
When Walmart might expand the use of Gatik vehicles was left unsaid. But the company has been investing in several self-driving vehicle projects over the years with the goal of using autonomous cars to help deliver customer orders.