Autonomous vehicle delivery can reduce congestion and add convenience for grocery customers

Michigan Automated Grocery Delivery Pilot

You could go out to get groceries, or the groceries could come to you—via an autonomous vehicle (AV) delivery system. Autonomous grocery delivery has tremendous potential to increase efficiency and safety, while alleviating congestion in our cities. We’re in the process of proving that theory. Stantec GenerationAV®, along with our partners, is piloting an AV grocery delivery program in the state of Michigan.

Funded through a Michigan Mobility Funding Platform grant, this project will address existing transportation challenges, alleviate mobility barriers, and reduce the impact of “food deserts” on communities. Another goal of the project is to accelerate the shift in consumer behavior away from taking trips to the grocery store and towards connected commerce.

Our role includes optimizing vehicle and delivery route designs for automated grocery delivery, testing system engineering requirements and processes, and sharing and scaling results. We’ll also gather information to help the client understand the customer experience, interactions, and acceptance, along with testing the vehicle configurations, engineering, operations, and integration needs. 

A change of this scope requires the resources and expertise of numerous partners. We’re proud to work with the following companies: Shyft, evTS, Interplai, Nino Salvaggio, Wygo, General Motors, Aon, and Amazon Web Services.