Meet the Nuro R3, a cute compact robotic delivery truck designed to bring sweet and savory treats to you.
Nuro is a robotics software developer founded by former Waymo engineers. The startup has been developing its Nuro Driver AI-powered autonomous driving software and hardware package since its inception in 2016, which can be found in its Nuro P2 robotaxi concept, the R2 — an even smaller delivery pod — and now the R3.
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The Nuro Driver software senses the world through a 360-degree array of lidar, radar, thermal camera and optical camera sensors, churning all of the data through its mapping, perception and AI navigation software. R3 is able to detect and avoid other vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and more as it makes its way to its destination. However, due to R3’s planned operation in city environments and neighborhoods with high pedestrian density and proximity, the robotics developer has outfitted the delivery bot with external pedestrian airbags, which can deploy to further boost safety should, say, a person dart into the EV’s path from behind a parked car.
R3 rides on a battery electric platform and powertrain built in partnership with Chinese EV giant BYD. Nuro estimates around a 100-mile range per charge with DC fast charging capability minimizing downtime between trips. For a passenger car, that’d be a pretty short range, but the R3 operates only between a local partner store, your neighborhood and back, so Nuro thinks (and I agree) that’s plenty for this intended use.
