For a self-driving vehicle startup, Gothic has a strange mantra: Don’t worry about autonomy, don’t worry about delivery.

In particular, the three-year-old company focuses on the so-called mid-mile  delivery, which periodically ignores footprints, generates an across lookout nationwide, and is said to have last sold out. Stop a few miles and get on someone’s driveway.

For over three years, Gatik has been placing sensors on all vans and small trucks and moving groceries from large distribution centers to small warehouses, even with a human backup driver.

In the world of moon-shot technology, the promise of one billion dollars of capital and disruption to private (and public) transportation, Gatik’s ambition is humble.

Last summer, it raised $ 4.5 million from investors, a pint-size amount in self-driving ventures. Gatik may not be sexy, but his slow-lane approach has proven to be practical and appealing. Last summer, Walmart signed up as one of its first customers.

Grocery deliveries were not a bad place when the epidemic spread. We caught up with Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Program, one of the smallest, safest players in the retail industry, a key area for transportation. Want to play (Interview edited.)

Why focus on the mid-mile?

It’s easy. We work between fixed places. We over-optimize technology to focus on these paths. Some edge cases are reduced because we know the paths very closely; We know the drive line. Because of all this, the time to market is fast.

What is technology?

We use the full suite. We have Velodin LIDAR – six LIDARs, six radars and 14 cameras.

Do your vehicles go to the interstate?

There are some ways highway driving, but our expertise is in complex urban areas. We literally don’t do the last mile but we do the driving like this. It is an approach to constructive autonomy; We have the luxury of choosing these paths. One of the things we do is make the right turn.

When we use these barriers, we don’t have to worry about changing multiple lanes, we don’t have to solve the unpublished left turn, which is tied to the entire industry. We always say we are solving the mid-mile problem, not really the autonomy issue.

How long do you spend on developing a new path?

Currently, it is four to six weeks old. We drive for two or three weeks and collect all the relevant data and it is very specific to the route. We are trying to reduce it by 50%.

So for every retailer, with the exception of maybe Amazon, is it leveling the playing field and changing the economics of e-commerce?

Okay, I can’t comment on the Amazon supply chain, but it’s happening across the industry. Let the whole idea stay close to the customer. Shrink that delivery window.

Tell me about the Walmart deal.

Everything went on within months, from the first meeting to the signing of the agreement. He knows what his flaws are. We posted it at their headquarters in July last year. Our vehicles operate 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day.

What are you competing with?

In terms of fierce competitors, there are none. No other company in the AV space uses box-truck construction. Other companies are moving to B-2-C and not long after. If you are following common autonomy issues, you are trying to keep the sea hydrated.

The fourth level of autonomy is at least 4 to 5 years and level 5 – even if it is possible, at least for 10 years. With constructive autonomy, we can avoid schools, hospitals, fire stations, blind curves, etc.

All of this is fair play. The time limit is very different because we are not really concerned about the issue of autonomy. For example, we do not care when the left rotation is left unresolved.

Have you targeted logistics and shipping companies like UPS and FedEx?

We have received a lot of interest from non-retail customers, but now we have decided to focus on retailers, specifically on the online grocery application.

Promising a 1-hour or 2-hour delivery window is not sustainable right now. They are losing money on this and this is where Gatik comes in Walk me through your response to the epidemic.

Our basic focus was ensuring that our operations were running smoothly. Since then, clearly we have seen a huge increase in the number of orders. We saw a 30–35% spike in the number of orders and number of inquiries. Our solution has become even more relevant; The main aspect is contactless delivery.

It is all being driven by e-commerce and everything is built around the expectations of consumers. You want delivery now and at the cheapest possible price.

In the old architecture you had a huge distribution center and delivery was once every 7 days, which was not very fast. Expectations have forced the retailer to move closer to the customer and get closer as you shrink warehouse space. It is point-to-point from the hub-and-spoke and the routes have exploded.

To date, Gatic has given more than 18,000 autonomous orders and these are revenue-generating orders. We have done over 50,000 revenue generating autonomous miles.

Any interest in areas you hadn’t thought of?

We saw huge interest from medical and pharma distribution companies. Consumer electronics retail is something that we are very interested in.

In particular, it is from inventory smoothing and inventory balancing. With Kovid, every company is rethinking its supply chain.

What is your size and scale at the moment and are you profitable?

More than 20 employees and we want to double the team size this year. We had a bit of a battle-chest in Kovid’s position. Many companies in our place are coming back, but we are actively hiring. At the vehicle level, with a safety driver on board, we are profitable. Obviously, at the company level we are not yet profitable.

As long as you can get humans out of the vehicle, how about?

Right now, we are focusing on areas that have favorable conditions – sites that do not have bad weather. . … of course before the B-2-C delivery application or the robo-taxi application, because they are really trying to boil the ocean.

So when the safety driver lands, does the price change or is it just the extra margin?

This is an additional margin, but once the driver stops we will increase the operating time. When you are not a person on the board, the whole-asset usage piece becomes more real.

Many customers become easy to handle with a vehicle, for example, groceries during the day and pharmaceutical or consumer electronics at night. We can extend some of those savings to our customers as well.

Any concerns that one of the leaders on autonomy would pivot to fill the mid-mile space?

We openly hope. We have always called it a no-brainer. But what will really help us is the relationships we are building with our customers.

We are doing so much more than just driving peace. At any point, our vehicles are tracking everything and all this data is very useful for retail customers. These are some of the value-adders that our customers really need and this adds to the stickiness factor.

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