How Nvidia is Using A.I. to Delivery Pizzas Faster

Nvidia announced a new tool that can help deliver your pizzas faster — yes, really — at its fall GTC 2021 event. It’s called ReOpt, and it’s a real-time logistics tool that Domino’s is already using to optimize delivery routes based on time and cost.

ReOpt is a set of logistics-planning algorithms that can find billions of routes to the same location. It utilizes heuristics powered by GPU computing to route vehicles in the most efficient way possible. It’s like Google Maps, just way more complex and designed specifically to meet the needs of last-mile delivery.

Domino’s hasn’t been shy about adopting new technology. The company has been saying for years that it’s a technology company that delivers pizzas, and has adopted everything from driverless cars to in-car delivery apps to help optimize ordering and delivery. ReOpt is the next evolution of that, it seems, and it’s an increasingly important tool for how the world operates today.

Last-mile delivery compromises the final leg of a package arriving to your door. It’s where an Amazon or FedEx driver drops off your package, and it represents the most significant pain point for e-commerce sales today. About 53% of delivery costs come just from last-mile delivery, as distant homes or traffic congestion create inefficiencies in delivery routes.

And with the pandemic boosting e-commerce sales to new highs, last-mile delivery has never been more important. ReOpt is the latest in a long line of Nvidia technologies that eyes GPUs as a solution. Nvidia says it can route 1,000 packages in three seconds on a GPU, work that would normally take a CPU five minutes.

Nvidia says that ReOpt can reduce delivery costs by 15%, which it says represents “billions” in savings. To illustrate this point, Nvidia pointed to Domino’s, which was able to quickly calculate 87 billion ways to visit 14 locations using ReOpt. ReOpt is also dynamic, helping last-mile delivery workers adapt to changing traffic conditions quickly.

Although Domino’s is the first company to adopt ReOpt, this type of tool applies across a wide variety of industries. From Amazon packages to DoorDash drivers, last-mile delivery has been a hurdle for several industries, and hopefully ReOpt will provide some solutions.

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