The Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO

Associated Press

Kroger Co is about to test whether it can steer supermarket customers away from crowded grocery aisles with a fleet of diminutive driverless cars designed to lower delivery costs.

The test programme announced last week could make Kroger the first US grocer to make deliveries with robotic cars that won't have a human riding along to take control in case something goes wrong.

Cincinnati-based Kroger is teaming up with Nuro, a Silicon Valley startup founded two years ago by two engineers who worked on self-driving cars at Google. That Google project is now known as Waymo, which plans to introduce a ride-hailing service that is supposed to begin picking up passengers in fully autonomous cars by the end of this year.

Like Waymo, Kroger is only saying its self-driving delivery service will start by the end of this year.

The location of the delivery service hasn't been determined yet either, although it most likely will involve Fry's supermarkets in California or Arizona, said Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson.

Customers will be able to order groceries from a mobile app, much like people summon an Uber or Lyft ride. After the order is placed, a driverless vehicle will deliver the groceries at a curb, requiring the customers to be present to fetch the items. The vehicles will probably be opened with a numeric code.

Kroger currently offers grocery delivery in vehicles driven by people at about 1,200 of its 2,800 stores.