Loblaw to test autonomous delivery vehicles in GTA in January

Gatik's relationships with its customers showcase the company's expertise in developing, operating and servicing autonomous delivery fleets for the largest retailers in the United States and Canada.

Oshoma Momoh, chief technical advisor at MaRS Discovery District, said that it should take another seven to 10 years for vehicles to operate fully autonomously and without the need for a safety pilot on Canadian roads.

Loblaw Digital senior vice president Lauren Steinberg said: "As more Canadians turn to online grocery shopping, we've looked at ways to make our supply chain more efficient". The vehicles will deliver items from the supermarket's automated picking facility to retail stores across the metro area.

All vehicles will have a human safety driver as a co-pilot. We're very proud of how we've supported our customers throughout this unpredictable year, and strengthened their supply chains with our product.

The vehicles will provide a contactless delivery solution for transporting goods from Loblaw's automated picking facility to retail locations, the retailer said. To wit: TuSimple is building out an autonomous freight network; Daimler is partnering with Waymo on an autonomous Freightliner; and Plus Level 3 autonomous trucks will be available next year in China.

"We, along with others in the industry, are looking to understand the challenges and benefits of this technology". "We will leverage this new funding to continue expanding our retail partnerships and fleet deployments, grow our team and enhance our technology platform to lead the market in autonomous middle mile delivery", said Gautam Narang, CEO and Co-founder of Gatik.

"Once we started to engage with the team at Gatik, it became clear our partnership would be mutually beneficial because Gatik was interested in testing their trucks in different weather conditions, which is an important factor when dealing with the unreliable weather we face in Canada".

Three-year-old Gatik is using box trucks (pictured) equipped with autonomous driving software to carry out middle-mile deliveries, or deliveries from warehouses and distribution centers to retail stores.

Gatik's customers include Walmart, which deployed its trucks in Bentonville, Ark., in June 2019. To date, Gatik has completed over 30,000 revenue-generating autonomous orders for multiple Fortune 500 customers in the United States and Canada.

"Retailers know the biggest inefficiencies in their logistics operations often exist in the middle-mile, typically between automated picking facilities and retail locations".

This niche is "where Gatik lives and succeeds", he said. In total, Gatik has now raised $29.5 million to date.

Loblaw partnered with Palo Alto, Calif. -based software startup Gatik AI for the delivery service.