Walmart will begin testing an autonomous vehicle delivery service this year that will allow customers to place orders online and have their groceries delivered by a driverless car. The pilot program is being launched in Austin, Texas; Miami, Florida: and Washington D.C. It's a partnership between the $560-billion mega-retailer and Ford, which will provide Ford Escape hybrids outfitted with Argo AI technology to make the deliveries. Argo AI, a co-venture between Ford and Volkswagen, will provide the cloud-based infrastructure to schedule drop-offs and safely route orders. Focusing on those three metro areas will show'the potential for autonomous vehicle delivery services at scale,' said Argo AI founder Bryan Salesky. Initial integration testing is expected to begin later this year, the companies said, and the service initially will be limited to specific areas in each city before being expanded over time.

Walmart has announced a delivery service for local businesses, which should be up and running by the end of the year. It plans to use drones and self-driving cars as part of the Walmart GoLocal infrastructure. Earlier this year, Walmart invested in Cruise after previously running a delivery pilot with GM's autonomous vehicle startup. Local retailers might be able to keep using their current commerce platform and hook it into GoLocal. It's a white-label service, so deliveries won't be made by Walmart-branded vehicles.

A new tech trend has emerged at the world's largest retailer, as Walmart brings on board thousands of robots in nearly 5,000 of its 11,348 stores. According to CNN Business, these robots will be scrubbing floors, scanning boxes, unloading trucks and tracking shelf inventory at mostly domestic U.S. locations. Robots will replace lower-level jobs--serving in janitorial functions as well as performing basic inventory work--in order to manage rising costs. A new robot unloader has already been used on the docks in hundreds of stores, pulling boxes from delivery trucks while automatically scanning and sorting merchandise. The unloader will be deployed at over 1,100 retail locations in the near future.