By Joe Hoppe

Self-driving technology startup Wayve said Wednesday that it has secured a 10 million-pound ($13.6 million) investment from online grocer Ocado Group PLC in a partnership that will develop autonomous grocery deliveries in urban environments.

Wayve said its technology will allow self-driving delivery cars to adapt to new, unstructured and highly-complex environments, without the need for pre-programming, human-designed rules or high-definition mapping.

The partnership will include an autonomous delivery trial, fitting Wayve's technology onto a selection of Ocado delivery vans and trialed on urban delivery routes for a year.

The trial will help test the technology's ability to navigate congested streets and perform the challenging maneuvers that home delivery systems will need to employ.

Ocado's chief of advanced technology Alex Harvey said the company is determined to develop autonomous mobility systems to improve the economics of its Ocado Smart Platform.

"We've been impressed with Wayve's approach to solving this most complex of challenges and are excited to accelerate our capabilities so that our retail partners globally can take advantage of them at the earliest opportunity," Mr. Harvey said.

Write to Joe Hoppe at joseph.hoppe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 06, 2021 07:02 ET (11:02 GMT)

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