Autonomous Storefronts and Taxis Deploy in US Cities
The autonomous vehicle sector is expanding beyond ride-sharing with new consumer applications. Robomart has gone live in Los Angeles with its first mobile, autonomous stores. Concurrently, Amazon-owned Zoox has reportedly begun deploying its autonomous taxis on the streets of Columbus, Ohio.
- Robomart's vehicles utilize a checkout-free system enabled by RFID technology from Avery Dennison, allowing customers to take items and be charged automatically. While the long-term goal is full autonomy, the initial West Hollywood fleet operates with a human driver who does not interact with shoppers, a step taken to navigate current regulations. - The Zoox vehicle is a purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, featuring bidirectional driving and four-wheel steering for maneuvering in tight urban spaces. Its sensor architecture combines LiDAR, radar, and cameras to create an overlapping 360-degree field of view with a range of over 150 meters. - In Columbus, the Zoox vehicles are retrofitted test cars being driven manually by safety operators to gather mapping and sensor data, not for public ride-hailing. The company is leveraging Ohio's varied weather conditions to inform its testing in other urban areas. - Robomart licenses its platform to retailers, such as Unilever and Mars, allowing them to operate branded mobile storefronts. The company plans to add over 100 new stores-on-wheels and phase in fully autonomous vehicles, using self-driving software from Whale Dynamic, by late 2025. - Zoox's autonomous driving system is powered by high-performance compute from NVIDIA, a partnership that began in 2017 to build a Level 5 vehicle from the ground up. - The deployment in Columbus is part of a broader national rollout strategy for Zoox, which is already offering free, geo-fenced public rides in Las Vegas and is testing in cities including San Francisco, Seattle, and Miami. - Robomart's initial launch in West Hollywood consists of "Snacks" and "Pharmacy" themed vehicles, with plans to expand to "Grocery," "Cafe," and "Deli" versions. Users hail the mobile stores via an app for a small fee.
