Hello, Houston: One Step Towards Bettering Everyday Lives Through Robotics

When we founded Nuro, we set out to accelerate the benefits of robotics for everyday life. In our first blog post, we discussed our goal of not building fancy gadgets for those who already have everything, but rather developing technology to improve the quality of life for everyone. And for the past four and a half years, we’ve been working on autonomous last-mile delivery to achieve this goal.

We believe that life should be spent on things that matter — not on trips to the store or hours stuck in traffic. And though this past year has been a tough one, it has given us an opportunity to further reflect on why we’re here and why we exist. For us, the answer turned out to be largely unchanged: we are here to better everyday life through robotics.

In service of this mission, we are proud to share an important milestone with a key partner: starting this week, Nuro’s R2 will be delivering Domino’s pizzas to select customers in Houston.

There’s been so much work over the years to arrive at this moment, and much of it isn’t visible to the outside world — from designing and manufacturing a custom vehicle from scratch to testing every aspect of our software stack. All that quiet effort has culminated in something modest but important: getting delicious pizza delivered to real customers.

This launch is really a glimpse of what’s to come. An autonomous pizza delivery to a customer in Houston will translate to deliveries of all kinds to people in all places. We want to build an equitable and accessible future with the promise of lower emissions, safer streets, and more communities that participate in the economic growth of autonomous delivery.

We’re honored to partner with Domino’s, the largest pizza company in the world and an expert in delivery. Dominos’ willingness to incorporate R2 into their service is a testament to their commitment to innovation. It’s proof they care deeply about constantly improving the customer experience, and we’re so excited to take this next step together.

Even though this week marks the beginning of our R2 service in Houston, we have already been in the area for quite some time, mapping and testing and working with other partners using our fleet of custom Prius vehicles. Our team in Houston has been the backbone of this deployment. It’s not a stretch to say that this moment wouldn’t be possible without the Houston locals who are personally invested in making sure R2 is safe for their community. They’ve paved the way for this technology and are growing our Nuro team, adding more jobs that provide stability and opportunities for Texas families.

Thank you, team. And we can’t wait to see what your neighbors think when they try the service. :)