The West Flemish coastal municipality of Knokke-Heist has become the first place in Europe where grocery deliveries are being made using robots. The French-owned international supermarket chain Carrefour has launched a pilot project using robot shopping trollies that make deliveries to homes within a 400-metre radius of its store. The pilot project will run until the middle of next month.
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A first in Europe: robots deliver groceries in Knokke-Heist
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The robots are based at a pop-up Carrefour store on the Lichttorenplein at Knokke’s seafront. Customers place their orders online and the self-steering trollies are loaded up with groceries by students. Once loaded the trollies travel autonomously to the delivery address. On arrival the trolly opens once the customer has scanned a QR code.
Elise, a student that works at the pop-up store, told VRT News that the robot trolly is exceptionally safe. "The robot has 8 cameras and always gives priority to other road-users and pedestrians”. As this is a pilot project a member of staff always follows the robot to make sure that everything is ok. Nevertheless, the robot trolleys are fully autonomous.
A first in Europe
3 robot trollies are being used for the pilot project that is the first of its kind by a supermarket anywhere in Europe.
Carrefour’s Syrin Stambouli told VRT News that "We previously ran a similar pilot project on an industrial estate in Zaventem (Flemish Brabant), but that wasn’t on the public highway. It was a private site and there was less traffic there. If this project runs smoothly, we would like to deploy the delivery robots elsewhere too. We are thinking of small and medium-sized towns where there is currently no other form of home delivery service.