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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Behind the Bot

Postmates X Spun Out of Uber to Become Serve Robotics

Uber has officially spun out its Postmates X division to become its own standalone company now called Serve Robotics. The news was first reported by TechCrunch and confirms rumblings about such a move reported back in January.

Uber acquired Postmates for $2.65 billion last year, which included the Postmates X robotics unit. The Serve delivery robot is an autonomous cooler-sized rover robot currently making deliveries around the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

According to TechCrunch, Serve Robotics has raised an undisclosed seed round of funding led by the VC firm Neo, with participation from Uber, Lee Jacobs, Long Journey Ventures, Western Technology Investment and other investors. Serve Robotics will be led by Ali Kashani, who headed up Postmates X, will have 60 employees, and will be headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, and Vancouver, Canada.

Delivery robots like Serve are definitely on the rise as a number of startups come to market around the world. In the U.S. Starship, Kiwibot and Refraction all have robots making deliveries. In Russia there’s Yandex, in South Korea there’s Woowa Brothers, and in Turkey there’s Delivers AI. (For more, check out our Delivery Robot Market Report available to our Spoon Plus members.)

With all these robotic solutions plus other autonomous vehicle options, Uber doesn’t need to have its own full-stack robotic delivery solution. As I wrote last month:

“…as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently explained on Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast, his company is in the networking business. Khosrowshahi doesn’t think Uber needs to create the technology uses, it just needs access to the best technology that allows it to facilitate deliveries and ridesharing. That’s one reason Uber offloaded its autonomous driving unit at the end of last year.”

Additionally, spinning off Serve Robotics means that Uber itself does not need to devote resources to figuring out the patchwork of state, county and city laws when it comes to actually getting commercial autonomous delivery vehicles on public sidewalks and streets. The flip side of that however, is that dealing with this patchwork of regulations is something Serve will have to do on its own.

Cecilia.ai Mixes Chatbot Capabilities with Its Robot Bartender

The robot bartenders we’ve covered so far at The Spoon are either just autonomous, articulating arms (Glacierfire), or high-volume vending machines (Rotender). Cecilia.ai, the latest entrant in the autonomous cocktail-making space, went live today and “she” is serving drinks a twist.

In addition to automated drink-pouring, Cecilia.ai features chatbot functionality to have a “conversation” with a customer. Cecilia looks like something out of a Vegas. The machine sports a big screen with a CGI female bartender. Walk up to Cecilia and start talking to order your drink. The Cecilia.ai website provides a sample conversation that goes something like this:

CUSTOMER: Hi there.

CECILIA: Hello there, what can I get you to drink?

CUSTOMER: Any recommendations?

CECILIA: My favorite is the Rusty Ale, but it’s a bit strong.

CUSTOMER: Do you have something sweeter?

CECILIA: Sure! Try the Green n’ Tonic.

And… scene.

According to website, Cecilia can make 120 drinks per hour (with reduced chit-chat), offers conversational script customization to fit a location, hundreds of available mixes and hold 70 liters (it doesn’t specify booze or mixer ratios). Voice control means ordering is contactless, and the large screen can be used for advertising purposes.

We’ve reached out to the company to find out more details like pricing and availability, and will update this when we hear back.

There are actually a number of robot bartenders coming to market right now. In addition to the aforementioned Glacierfire bar and Rotender robot, MSC Cruises is installing a robot bartender on one on of its ships, Macco’s robot is serving beer in Spain, and Makr Shakr continues to sell its robot bartender solution.

One reason for all this automated mixology is probably, like so many other things, the pandemic. Having hundreds of strangers yell out their orders into the faces of human bartenders isn’t such a great idea any more, thanks to COVID. A robot bartender eliminates that vector of human-to-human transmission. But another reason is that robot bartenders are machines that can crank out drinks around the clock without taking a break, and they do so without spilling or overpouring (which may suck for customers but is good for a bar’s bottom line).

From what we can gather, Cecilia isn’t aimed at high-volume nightclubs and bars, but instead is more for hotels, airports, VIP lounges, etc. This makes sense since a crowded bar blasting music in the background would make it difficult for Cecilia to hear a patron order a Patron with only their voice.

The only question that remains is whether sage wisdom and funny anecdotes are programmed into her chatbot capabilities.

Mars Wrigley Launches Mobile Robotic Kiosk at ShopRite

The impulse aisle in the checkout line has long been the bane of many parents’ grocery shopping trips. While cashiers scan items and parents wait to pay, racks of candy and treats are within arm’s reach of bored kids sitting in carts.

But if you thought tempting kids with treats out checkout was rough, wait until there’s a shiny new robot wandering the grocery aisles, offering up candy.

Mars Wrigley and Wakefern Food Corp. announced last week that they are working with robot company Savioke to deploy a mobile robotic vending kiosk at ShopRite store in Monroe, NY.

According to Kiosk Marketplace, the robot, dubbed “Smiley,” plays music and dances (doing the robot, we assume) (sorry!), while offering up treats and such for sale.

There aren’t a ton of details, such as how many treats Smiley can hold, or the mechanics of how the treats are dispensed and paid for. (We reached out to Mars Wrigley for more information.)

We’ve seen these types of robots before. Self-driving robots can wheel around inside existing retail spaces to act as promotional, err, vehicles, or direct avenues. In China, FANBOT is already scurrying around cinemas, malls and hotels, selling drinks, snacks and more. And Pudutech’s robot, which is basically a series of shelves on wheels, cruise around grocery stores in Japan and the Netherlands, showcasing items that are on sale.

At the risk of tooting my own horn too loudly, automated mobile kiosks was a trend I said to look out for in 2021. So I think we’re going to see a lot more robots roaming store aisles trying to sell us stuff. Maybe their LED faces will need to show a scowl though, to keep the kids away.

Imperium Drive Comes Out of Stealth with Bandwidth-Aware Teleoperation for Robots

One of the many questions facing delivery robot startups as they come to market is how much autonomy to give the robots. Should they go full autonomous driving, even though that is more technically complex and there is still a patchwork of regulation that needs to be dealt with? Or should they go with less autonomy and use humans to help guide or even drive their robots to sidestep some of the complications that come with self-driving vehicles.

For robot delivery startups wrestling with these questions, Imperium Drive says it’s here to help. Based in Europe (the company is scattered across different countries because of the pandemic) and part of the TechStars Smart Mobility cohort, Imperium Drive makes a teleoperation system for autonomous vehicles, including the small rover robots favored by the likes of Starship, Kiwibot, Postmates and others.

Imperium does the whole teleoperation stack, from the software onboard the robot to the human on the other end who helps the robot navigate. Imperium lets robot companies choose how much teleoperation they want, depending on their robot’s level of autonomy. Imperium can have a human simply monitor the robot remotely in case it gets stuck or runs into trouble, or the company can plot points on a map for the robot to autonomously follow. At the far end of the spectrum, Imperium can have a human actually drive the delivery robot remotely, like a videogame.

Imperium Drive Co-Founder and CEO, Koosha Kaveh, told me by phone this week that his company’s secret sauce is its ability to operate even when network connections provide only low bandwidth. As the robot runs around town, the strength of its cellular connection will vary, sometimes offering very small pipes for data to get through.

“We’ve developed our own AI predictive engine that predicts changes of network parameters,” said Kaveh, “And we change automatically our streaming engine based on availability.”

A easy way to think about Imperium’s bandwidth technology is Netflix. The movie streaming service will detect how much bandwidth you have (e.g., a cellular connection versus wired Ethernet) and serve a movie in a resolution fit for that situation. Imperium does the same thing, just with data from the robot.

Delivery robots are actually streaming a lot of data back to their headquarters. There’s video from the robot’s on-board cameras as well as lidar and radar information. Imperium adapts what is streamed based on the amount of bandwidth. For example, if there’s very little bandwidth, Imperium can send just wireframes of the robots surroundings. Kaveh said that it can stream the relevant information a teleoperator needs at under 1MB of data.

The idea of teleoperating robots brings up the question of scale. It’s easy to understand self-driving robots scaling up to meet demand because that’s the whole point — there is no human labor to pay. Once you have the robots, they can just run around the clock with no additional cost. What happens to the economics when you have a human handling a robot?

Kaveh says Imperium has a network of inexpensive labor in Eastern Europe that it can tap into to teleoperate robots. And Imperium isn’t alone in using humans to guide robots. Kiwibot has a team of people in Colombia that plots the courses for its robots (not full-on driving). And Tortoise skipped the idea of self-driving altogether for its robots, believing it can create a Mechanical Turk style army of human gig-work teleoperators.

The fact that Imperium Drive exists is at least some indication that the delivery robot space is maturing. As we outlined in our Delivery Robot Market Report, there are many companies around the world deploying delivery robots on city streets. Imperium Drive is part of a typical business cycle for new market categories like delivery bots. It’s not creating the robots themselves, but adding a layer to make those robots run more efficiently. As robots gain traction, we’ll see more third-party add-ons like this meant to improve robot delivery operations.

Move Over, Isaac. Humanoid Robo-Bartender to Set Sail on Cruise Ship

It’s not just love that’s exciting and new on the cruise ship MSC Virtuosa. MSC Cruises announced yesterday that Rob, the humanoid, robotic bartender, is reporting for duty to pour drinks at the Virtuosa‘s Starship Club this spring (hat tip to Cruise Industry News).

Rob will be part of the futuristic integrated bar and entertainment experience offered by the Starship Club, which will also feature 3D holograms, immersive digital are and an infinity digital interactive table guests can use to explore space.

To grab a drink, guests will place their order in “vertical digital cockpits,” setting Rob to work. Rob’s articulating arms will mix and serve a range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Rob also speaks eight different languages (English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese) and can adjust according to the language a guest uses when placing an order. Rob also has an LED face to convey emotions, and presumably scowl because no one will tip a robot bartender.

Rob is not the only robo-bartender serving up drinks nowadays. Glacierfire in Iceland is a bar built around its robot bartender. In Spain, Macco Robotics‘ robot serves beer. And of course, there is the Tipsy Robot slinging drinks in Las Vegas.

What’s interesting about Rob is that MSC Cruises decided to go with a full-on humanoid robot, not just articulating arms. When your bar is called “The Starship Club,” it probably makes sense to have a bartender bot that looks like what people think of a robot. But for more high-volume locations like a nightclub, the theatrics of a smiling humanoid with articulating arms could be ditched in favor of a personality-less machine that is faster.

It also should be noted that by the time Rob debuts in April, the COVID-19 pandemic will still very much be a part of our everyday lives. As of now, the CDC recommends that all people avoid travel on cruise ships. Despite that warning, tons of people are signing up for sea vacations. Having a robot pour drinks means at least your bartender won’t get sick and won’t be a vector of transmission for other passengers.

For those who are both robot curious and brave enough to set sail, the Virtuosa will begin cruises in the Mediterranean in April before being deployed to Northern Europe in 2021.

Food Robots Are Coming to Dubai

We are on a mission at The Spoon to chronicle the rise of food robots as they pop up all over the world. Today, we spin our globe and land on Dubai, where a fully robotic cafe has been serving up drinks and delivery robots will soon be roaming the sidewalks.

Reuters has a story up this week about the Robo Cafe in Dubai, which, is exactly what you think it is: a fully autonomous eatery. The Robo Cafe has actually been in business since last year, and uses four different robots to pour drinks, grab food and bring all items to your table.

A Robot Made This! (Inside Dubai's Robot Cafe)

Located in what appears to be a shopping mall, the Robo Cafe has a barista bot to create coffee drinks, a bartender bot to make mocktails and juices, a food bot that grabs pastries and other prepared foods, and a cadre of waiter bots. Customers place orders via a touchscreen on the counter and the appropriate bot fulfills the order. Food and drinks are place on a waiter bot, which is a large, squat puck, which autonomously carries the the order to the customer. No humans needed (unless something breaks down).

Unlike the big robot restaurant complex run by Country Garden in China, the Robo Cafe is much smaller and appears to have more of a relaxed feel. The whole cafe is out in the open (no walls) and instead of tables, people belly up to a counter to order and enjoy their food and drink.

Later this year, however, customers may not even need to sit at the counter to enjoy their Robo Cafe coffee. The Khaleej Times reports that robot delivery startup, Delivers AI will start trialing its service in Dubai in Q3 of this year.

Delivers AI, is among the cohort of current startups using autonomous, cooler-sized robots to make food deliveries. The company, which is relatively young, is currently making deliveries in Istanbul, Turkey.

The pandemic has accelerated interest in robotics because of their contactless nature. With no humans working in the Robo Cafe, there is no human-to-human viral transmission. Same goes for those little delivery robots.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can check out my recent Delivery Robot Market Report that I wrote for our Spoon Plus subscription service. It outlines the key players in operation all over the world as well as their challenges and opportunities.

Orders for Food and Consumer Goods Robots Grew 56 Percent Last Year

Often when we write about the growth in food robotics, it’s based on anecdotal data. For example, over the past year robot startups have told us that thanks to COVID-19, they’ve seen a surge in demand.

Now, thanks to the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), we have some hard numbers to reaffirm what we’ve already been reporting. The A3 announced yesterday that for the first time last year, orders of robots for non-automotive purposes surpassed automotive robot orders. According to the press announcement, sales of robotic units in North America in 2020 were up 3.5 percent over sales in 2019. North American companies ordered 31,044 robotic units at a value of $1.572 billion last year.

For our specific purposes here at The Spoon, the A3 said that orders for food and consumer goods robots grew by 56 percent in 2020. And not only were more robots being ordered for the food sector, they were being used for higher-level tasks. Mark Joppru, Vice President, Consumer Segment & Service Robotics, US ABB Robotics and Machine Automation, said in the A3 press release:

In food applications, for example, where robots were traditionally used to automate simpler processes like case loading, they are increasingly being commissioned for higher value processes, like directly preparing food, resulting in improvements to food safety and hygiene. While these trends have existed for several years, COVID has changed perceptions and priorities for customers, accelerating the adoption of robotic automation.

This echoes what we’ve been hearing from food robot startups throughout the pandemic. Cleanliness and hygiene are the new priorities for the companies buying food robots. Robots provide a contactless way of preparing, ordering and delivering food, create more social distance in kitchens and can help alleviate staffing issues.

Just as important, robots are getting more sophisticated and, as Joppru points out, able to complete higher value tasks. Flippy is working the fryers at White Castle. Woowa Brothers delivery bots are integrating with elevator and security systems to increase navigation within buildings. And robot kiosks like RoboEatz can prepare 1,000 meals before needing a human to refill the ingredients.

Given the constant stream of robot news we’re been writing, it’s not too hard to imagine that this time next year, we’ll be writing about record growth for the industry in 2021.

Starship Raises Another $17M, Adds UCLA and Announces its Millionth Delivery

Delivery robot company Starship announced today that it has raised an additional $17 million in funding. Investors include TDK Ventures and Goodyear Ventures, and this brings the total amount raised by Starship to $102 million.

As part of today’s announcement, Starship also said that it has now completed 1 million autonomous deliveries, and that its service will be rolling out to the campuses of UCLA and Bridgewater State University (Massachusetts).

Starship makes self-driving, cooler-sized, six-wheeled delivery robots that carry food, groceries and more. Starship started rolling out its robot delivery service to U.S. college campuses starting with George Mason university back in January of 2019. Since then, the company has added a steady stream of colleges to its ranks across the country over the ensuing years, and has started making grocery deliveries in Modesto, CA.

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped generate interest in delivery robots because of their contactless nature. You don’t have as much human-to-human interaction when the delivery agent is a robot. Robots can also operate all day (even taking the crummy shifts without complaining), and potentially bring down the cost of delivery, making it more affordable for more people.

The delivery robot space is heating up and there are a number of players getting into or scaling up their operations around the world. In the U.S., Kiwibot is operating in San Jose and, coincidentally, it announced earlier this month that it would be expanding to Los Angeles (where Postmates’ Serve robot already works). Yandex is operating food delivery bots in Moscow. Woowa Brothers is making deliveries in Seoul, South Korea. And a newcomer called Ottonomy is just starting to bring its robots to market here in the U.S.

The delivery robots aren’t coming, they are already here.

Ottonomy’s Delivery Robot Drops Food at Your Door and Indoors

There are a few common threads among most delivery robot startups like Starship, Kiwibot and Postmates: They are all using cooler-sized rover ‘bots. Each of their robots has just one cargo compartment. And they are all focused on outdoor delivery. This is where Ottonomy aims to separate itself from the rest of the pack.

Yes, Ottonomy makes rover robots like those other players. Ottonomy’s four-wheeled robot is twice the size of Starship’s robot, has autonomous driving capabilities, and can carry 40 to 45 kg (88 to 100 lbs.). But Ottonomy’s approach to delivery is a little different.

First, Ottonomy’s robot has two compartments, allowing it to make two separate deliveries during a single trip. This means the robot can generate more revenue per trip because it doesn’t have to return to a restaurant or market after every single drop-off.

More important, however, is where Ottonomy will make those deliveries. In addition to making last-mile deliveries, Ottonomy robots will make deliveries indoors. Think large transit hubs like airports or shopping malls. So, for example, a consumer waiting at an airport could order a meal from a participating airport restaurant and have it brought directly to them, wherever they are inside.

Ottonomy Co-Founder and CEO, Rutikar Vijay told me by phone this week that his robots can accomplish this indoor delivery because they do not rely as heavily on GPS to get around. The robots just need to map out the space once, and can then start making deliveries (Ottonomy robots cannot, however ride escalators or elevators).

In addition to opening up a new delivery market, making indoor deliveries could also be an easier path to market for Ottonomy. Unlike Kiwibot, which uses humans to plot delivery routes on public sidewalks, Ottonomy, as its name indicates, is all-in on autonomous driving (though there is still someone monitoring the robot). States and cities are all developing their own rules around autonomous delivery robots with varying levels of restrictions (which streets, operation house, whether a human needs to accompany the robot, etc.). Ottonomy isn’t avoiding outdoor deliveries in the U.S., but by going indoors and off city sidewalks, it can sidestep dealing with the patchwork of regulation and start generating revenue right away.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic has kept most people from going to airports or congregating in large indoor areas, at some point we will again, and chances are good that robots will join us. In addition to Ottonomy, Cheetah Mobile in China has its FANBOT, which is basically a mobile vending machine that roams around hotel lobbies and cinemas.

That pandemic has also spurred more interest in robot delivery because of their contactless nature. Not only do they reduce a vector of human-to-human transmission, robots provide an additional method of delivery, which is more important than ever to restaurants.

Ottonomy has already been making deliveries in India and did a pilot last fall in an undisclosed transit hub. Vijay didn’t disclose pricing, but said that the company is exploring both a straight up robotics-as-a-service business model as well as one that includes revenue sharing.

Miso Robotics Equity Crowdfunds $17M, Extends Campaign to Raise $30M

Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy the cooking robot, announced today that it raised $17 million during its equity crowdfunding campaign from April through November of last year.

In its press announcement, Miso said that its campaign was the highest-grossing technology deal ever on the SeedInvest equity crowdfunding platform. The $17 million was only a little more than half of the $30 million the company had intended to raise, but Miso will be extending this equity crowdfunded Series C round into this year to try and hit that $30 million milestone. Miso has previously raised $15 million in financing and $3.3 million in venture debt.

Miso’s crowdfunding came during a tumultuous time for the restaurant industry, and running an equity campaign during a global pandemic was both bad and fortuitous for the food robotics company. On the one hand, COVID-19 decimated the restaurant industry, shuttering thousands of restaurants and limiting Miso’s potential customer base. Stadiums, where Flippy was already making in-roads as an automated fry cook, were also shut down.

But this crisis also meant opportunity for Miso. While many restaurants were closed, deep pocketed QSRs were able to weather the tumult and were in more of a position to afford Flippy. In a high-profile example, after an initial pilot in July of last year, White Castle quickly expanded its use of Flippy to 11 of its locations.

Buck Jordan, Co-Founder, President & Chairman of Miso Robotics, told me by phone this week that the pandemic caused a “massive” increase of QSRs interest in Miso’s technology. According to Jordan, that interest is being driven by QSR staffing issues, the ability to create social distancing in the kitchen and the ability to transition workers into roles that more involve cleaning and fulfilling delivery and takeout orders.

With restaurants emphasizing delivery and takeout options, there will most likely be sustained interest in technology that can keep workers engaged with off-premises order fulfillment and customer service.

In addition to the funding news, Miso also announced the appointment of Mike Bell as CEO and Jake Brewer as Chief Strategy Officer. Bell was previously COO at Ordermark and President and COO at Bridg. Brewer was formerly VP of Restaurant Excellence at CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Cafe X Re-Opens SFO Robot Barista

Those of you still going to airports can once again grab a robot-made coffee at the San Francisco International Airport. Cafe X re-opened its automated barista kiosk in Terminal 3 at SFO earlier this week.

Cafe X had shuttered both of its airport locations (the other one was at the San Jose Airport) last year as the global COVID-19 pandemic decimated air travel. We reached Cafe X Founder and CEO, Henry Hu via Twitter today. He told us that the SFO location was actually closed by the airport because Terminal 3 was seeing so little use. Hu said SFO gave Cafe X the greenlight to re-open recently, as traffic there has ticked back up.

When we last spoke with Hu in August, he said that despite the SFO and San Jose airport closures, Cafe X was still in talks to place its robo-barista at a number of other airports. Airport installations had been a key go-to market strategy for automated vending services and kiosks like Cafe X and Briggo (which is now Costa Coffee). Briggo had even signed a partnership with SSP America to place its robotic baristas in 25 airports throughout 2020 and 2021.

But as noted, the pandemic closed off airports as high-volume locations. Automated food services had to look elsewhere for places where a lot of people want food and beverages quickly.

However, with multiple vaccines beginning to be distributed this year, we could actually see an increase in airport deals for automated vending companies. There will be a lot of pent up desire to travel as the population gets vaccinated, and those returning to the friendly skies will want/need a fresh hot cup of coffee. Cafe X’s robot barista can not only make a mean latte, it also does so in a more contactless way than traditional coffee shops. Perhaps this combination will help Cafe X take off.

Report: Uber Looking to Spin Off Postmates X Delivery Robot Biz

As part of its acquisition of Postmates last year, Uber got into the delivery robot business. Now, according to a report in TechCrunch, Uber is planning to get out of the robo-biz by spinning off Postmates X (the robotics division of the company) into a separate company.

From TechCrunch:

Postmates X, the robotics division of the on-demand delivery startup that Uber acquired last year for $2.65 billion, is seeking investors in its bid to become a separate company, according to several people familiar with the plans.

The new spinout is being called Serve Robotics, named after the companies’ autonomous, cooler-sized Serve robot, which was making deliveries in Los Angeles throughout much of 2020. More recently, Postmates Serve was enlisted by the Pink Dot market to make deliveries in West Hollywood.

TechCrunch reports that Serve Robotics would retain the IP and assets, and Uber would keep a 25 percent stake in the company.

Given how the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing restaurants and grocers to adopt more contactless delivery methods, it may seem like an odd time for Uber to get out of the delivery robot business.

As we’ve been chronicling, autonomous delivery robots are popping up all over the globe. Starship has been doing deliveries on college campuses for more than a year, and expanded to grocery delivery in Modesto, CA. Kiwibot partnered with the City of San Jose for robot restaurant deliveries there. Then there’s Yandex in Russia, Delivers AI in Turkey, and Woowa Brothers in Seoul, South Korea.

But as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently explained on Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast, his company is in the networking business. Khosrowshahi doesn’t think Uber needs to create the technology uses, it just needs access to the best technology that allows it to facilitate deliveries and ridesharing. That’s one reason Uber offloaded its autonomous driving unit at the end of last year.

While the use of robotics is definitely on the rise around the world, there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome before they become mainstream. Regulations and production scale are two biggies. Right now there are a patchwork of rules around autonomous delivery that vary from city to city and state to state. Even as those get ironed out, scaling robots to a number where we see them across the country is still a huge undertaking.

Uber pushing those issues off on to a separate company means Uber can focus more on its own delivery and ridesharing businesses. Uber can then just license the robot technology to facilitate its food delivery.