The Nuro EC-1

Six years ago, I sat in the Google self-driving project’s Firefly vehicle — which I described, at the time, as a “little gumdrop on wheels” — and let it ferry me around a course in Mountain View.

How Google’s self-driving car project accidentally spawned its robotic delivery rival

Nuro doesn’t have a typical Silicon Valley origin story. It didn’t emerge after a long, slow slog from a suburban garage or through a flash of insight in a university laboratory.

Here’s what the inevitable friendly neighborhood robot invasion looks like

The first sign that your town is about to welcome a horde of Nuro robots will be the appearance of a fleet of human-driven Toyota Priuses modified with cameras, lidars and radars.