Online grocery shopping levels up with autonomous deliveries

When a major grocery store chain starts using driverless cars to deliver groceries, it's a good sign that autonomous tech has gone mainstream.

Supermarket chain Kroger and autonomous robots startup Nuro announced Wednesday that the two were partnering to deliver groceries using a fleet of driverless delivery vehicles.

The autonomous vehicles will start delivering milk, eggs, and bread through a pilot program this fall in an unspecified market. Eventually Kroger is hoping to use Nuro's vehicles at its 2,800 stores across America.

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The driverless delivery vehicles will work with Kroger's ClickList same-day ordering system and Nuro's app. But the partnership takes ClickList one step further — instead of picking up your online order in your car, a self-driving vehicle will take your grocery list from the store to your front door.

Alisyn Malek, COO of autonomous vehicle startup May Mobility, sees the Nuro-Kroger partnership as taking on the so-called last-mile problem for packages and food orders.

"You’re really seeing companies that recognize that what works today in robotics is solving real challenges," she said about the partnership.