Greg's Corner

Oxford tests its own autonomous delivery truck

In a similar vein to Moby Mart and Starship delivery robots, comes another self-driving delivery service. Oxford University, yes that Oxford, is in the testing stage of an autonomous delivery van called CargoPod.

Oxford’s self-driving vehicle lab Oxbotica, is currently test-driving the CargoPod in a small section of London. The van contains eight pods that can hold a small set of packages customers have ordered from a retailer’s website. It still has a long way to go in being a viable service, however it shows a lot of promise. Also, it’s not completely autonomous as UK law requires a human driver to be available in order to take over the wheel if need be. There’s also the matter of security since it does not currently have any form of identifying correct customers.

Again, once this technology is perfected, it could be a boon to the online classifieds industry as it could eliminate face-to-face meetings between buyer and seller. That means it could discourage a lot of the unsafe aspects of selling something online. It shouldn’t come as a surprise if some startup ends up using this or similar technology to try to ensure the safety of classifieds users.