Domino’s to Use Self Driving Car to Deliver Pizzas

It won’t happen anywhere but Ann Arbor, Michigan right now, but pizza chain Domino’s will be experimenting with a self-driving Ford Fusion vehicle to deliver food in the city.

The pizza company has teamed up with Ford to see how people will respond to the autonomous delivery method. It will be one Ford Fusion equipped with cameras, sensors, radar, and LIDAR from Ford, in order to delivery food for a month-long test.

It won’t be an empty car however because in order to test customer’s reactions, a human engineer will be behind the wheel.

Those customers who will be in the month long trial will get a text when their order arrives and they will have to walk out to the car to pick up their food. They will have to punch in the last four numbers in their phone number into a touchscreen display that will be at the rear passenger side window and then take the pizza from the warming oven inside.

Sherif Marakby, Ford VP of autonomous and electric vehicles, said, “It’s not just ride-sharing and ride-moving or people moving, but it’s also moving the goods. We develop the plan to go to market as we develop the tech. We work with partners (and) this is one example. There will be more in the future.”