Ford is looking at how self-driving food deliveries might work with the help of a pilot project in Miami.

Ford’s Miami project explores how self-driving food deliveries might work

Run in collaboration with logistics firm Postmates, the project offers on-demand delivery from restaurants and coffee shops as well as other types of stores – more than 70 businesses are participating in total – via a fleet of Ford Transit Connects.

The vehicles feature three lockers – one on the passenger side and two in the back – that help deliver both food and goods using an access code.

However, although the actual process of collecting the goods from the vans is automated, the vans are manually driven by an experienced driver with the research on these test vehicles exploring the first and last mile of the delivery experience, testing how businesses and consumers interact with a self-driving vehicle. This work augments Ford’s separate research on self-driving technology in test vehicles.