BERLIN, April 25, 2022. Loyal to its track record of delivery innovation, Domino’s Pizza is bringing robotic deliveries to customers in the German capital, in cooperation with AI-tech company TERAKI. This is the first delivery robot to be granted an official permit to operate in Berlin public spaces; making it the only robot in Germany currently operating on city sidewalks and not on a campus or a confined area.
Automotive-grade, autonomous driving platform for robot operations. TERAKI is known for its credentials in the autonomous driving field. For more than six years, TERAKI has developed safe AI-powered sensor data processing algorithms that enable vehicles to drive autonomously. That expertise is now being transferred to delivery robots, a field where TERAKI and Domino’s Pizza are advancing autonomous delivery to complement current delivery methods.
"We are very pleased to be driving this project forward together with TERAKI, to learn from each other and to prepare Domino's optimally for the requirements of the future. Especially in view of the highly competitive labor market and the shortage of drivers, we believe that delivery robots can be an addition to serve the needs of our customers. The 'Golden Mile' as we call the close radius of our stores, offers great opportunities for autonomous delivery," explains André ten Wolde, Domino's Pizza Enterprise CEO Europe. "We see delivery robots in the future as a supplement to our drivers in the immediate vicinity of our stores and never as a replacement," emphasizes the CEO of Domino’s Pizza Europe.
During a 5-week pilot phase the robot will be delivering pizzas and drinks around Domino’s Pizza store in Berlin-Charlottenburg Nord sidewalks. Traveling on four wheels, the robot carries pizzas in its insulated compartment to customers. The robot is equipped with a highly specialized sensor set-up to navigate the city sidewalks. The sensor-set and the software recognize sidewalks, bike paths, pedestrians, traffic signs and cars. Initially, the robot will collect data in Charlottenburg for further training of its existing self-driving algorithms and, by doing so, increase its level of autonomy adhering to upcoming autonomous driving (L4) regulations in Germany.
Complement delivery options with a reliable autonomous driving solution. Utilizing TERAKI’s platform, Domino’s Pizza and TERAKI will evaluate the results with a view to deploy more robots in the future. The objective is to learn and grow the number of robots that operate with little or no supervision from human operators. With this, TERAKI helps customers to truly scale their last-mile delivery operations. Depending on the outcome, Domino’s Pizza is considering adding more robots to the mix of delivery options to cope with the growing shortages of couriers in the near future.
“We are thrilled to provide robot deliveries with Domino’s Pizza. TERAKI's leading technology behind this robot originates from automotive and assures safe deliveries at lower costs for chipsets and sensors. Our product distinguishes itself by achieving autonomous operations faster as well have this autonomy approved by authorities. That’s exactly what we are doing together with Domino’s Pizza who has been a true innovator in this space.” stated Geert-Jan van Nunen, CCO of TERAKI.
To get pizzas delivered by this robot, customers in Berlin Charlottenburg can order via the Domino’s Pizza website or app. Upon the robot’s arrival, customers can unlock the compartment with a code that will be sent during the delivery.
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About Domino's Pizza
Domino’s Pizza Germany is the market leader in Pizza Home Delivery with more than 380 stores, more than 180 franchise partners and around 10.000 employees. It is one of the ten largest gastro-franchisers. The brand with the red-blue domino delivers more than 30 million pizzas per year. Domino’s Pizza goal is always to deliver freshly made pizza, pasta, salads and wraps, chicken snacks and desserts from high quality ingredients. As part of the world market leader Domino’s Pizza know-how fuses with international expertise. In doing so, Domino‘s relies on the lead in quality, delivery time, technological innovation and fun at work.
Contact: Kathrin Rezac, External Communications Manager. Kathrin.rezac@dominos.de
About TERAKI
TERAKI is a Berlin-based, AI-software company specializing in safer autonomous mobility at lower cost. Teraki’s software enables L2, L3, L4 vehicles to detect and classify objects more accurately in real-time. In a lightweight manner and at the edge, TERAKI software selects and processes large amounts of sensor data (video, radar, and lidar) 10x more efficiently and produce more reliable decisions for safer autonomous operations. Use cases include autonomous driving vehicles such as cars, delivery robots, forklifts, trains and more. TERAKI holds partnerships with leading chipset suppliers such as Infineon, NXP, Synopsys and ARM. TERAKI’s technology will be used in first series production of cars starting 2024. The company currently employs 50 people, with offices in Berlin and Tokyo.
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