Category: Behind the Bot
-
San Francisco has given Postmates the city’s “first-ever permit for sidewalk robotics operations,” according to a story in TechCrunch. The move marks a turn in the city’s official attitude towards delivery robots on its city sidewalks. Postmates unveiled its rover robot, dubbed Serve, in December of last year, but has been relatively quiet about the…
-
✴︎
While my colleagues are across the Pacific this week at the SKS Japan show, I’ve been thinking about college. Specifically, how college and university campuses are a lucrative frontier for food delivery. Unless you’re in an urban campus like NYU, where delivery, takeout, and street food options already abound, the average college campus has everything…
-
Scout, Amazon’s autonomous wheeled delivery bot, will start delivering packages today in Irvine, California, according to a blog post published by Amazon. Scout bots will operate “Monday through Friday, during daylight hours,” according to the blog post. Customers in Irvine will order their packages as normal, including options for same-day delivery for Prime members. The…
-
Israel-based MetoMotion announced today it has raised a $1.5 million seed round for its multipurpose robotics system called GRoW (Greenhouse Robotics Worker) (via AgFunder). There aren’t a lot of details on specifics of the funding round. According to AgFunder, the team behind GRoW has only said that “a leading Netherlands-based company in the greenhouse industry”…
-
Chipotle has been implementing more artificial intelligence (AI) into its stores this year in the form of AI-powered voice assistants for phone orders, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. The chain has already implemented the technology into 1,800 locations so far this year, and plans to have the system in remaining U.S. stores by the end…
-
When Refraction AI came out of stealth a couple weeks back, the company provided a fair amount of detail about its REV-1 autonomous delivery robot. The REV-1 has three wheels, can ride in a bike lane and ditched LIDAR in favor of on-board cameras for its navigation. But we still had a few questions about…
-
Amazon is still hard at work building an actual Rosie the Robot-type robot for your home, according to a report today in Bloomberg. We first heard about this robot a little more than a year ago, but this latest report indicates Amazon has not given up on the project and has actually increased work on…
-
When it comes to autonomous delivery robots, size matters. Full-sized self-driving cars can travel on most major roads and go long distances, but may not work well in dense, traffic-congested cities. Little rover robots are nimble enough to zip along on sidewalks, but have a pretty limited range. Refraction AI, an autonomous robotics startup that…
-
Connected Robotics, the Tokyo-based startup that makes food robots, announced yesterday that it has raised a ¥850M ($7.8 million USD) Series A funding round. The round was led by Global Brain Corporation, with participation from 31VENTURES Global Innovation Fund, UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Ltd., Sony Innovation Fund, and 500 Startups JP, L.L.C. This brings the…
-
Homer Simpson once sang “You don’t win friends with salad,” but he might change his tune if he knew those greens were harvested by a robot. Well, probably not. But we at The Spoon definitely think its cool that researchers at the University of Cambridge in England have developed a robot that can automatically identify…
-
If I told you that Russian ‘bots were getting more sophisticated and spreading, your first reaction might be one of concern. But what if I told you that those Russian ‘bots served coffee? Well, then you might welcome them with open arms. Moscow-based Foodtronics has created FIBBEE, a robot barista that serves up all manner…
-
We know that robots can cook up hamburgers, fry tater tots, and even make delicious bowls of food in high volume restaruants. But YPC Technologies wants to put that fast food style of robot to work making more complicated dishes like salmon filets, mushroom risotto, or even raspberry sorbet. Based in Montreal, Canada, YPC (which stands…
Get the spoon in your inbox.
By subscribing you agree to our Privacy Policy and provide consent to receive updates from our company.
Site by House of Giants
© 2026 All Rights Reserved