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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

Kiwi’s Delivery Robots Roll Onto the Streets of San Jose, CA

Kiwi announced today that its rover robots are now delivering food and other items around two areas in San Jose, CA. According to Kiwi, what makes this rollout unique is that the company has partnered with the city itself to help mitigate deployment and maintenance issues that come with robots scurrying around city sidewalks.

Starting today, a “squad” of 25 robots will be making deliveries in the downtown area and Buena Vista neighborhoods of San Jose. As many as 120 businesses will be participating in the program.

Kiwi is also working with the city of San Jose to help with the management of the roaming robots. Kiwi Co-Founder and CEO, Felipe Chávez, told me by phone last week that previously, if a robot got stuck or broke down (or caught fire), someone would have to notify the city, which would then notify the company operating the robot. The company would then have to dispatch someone to take care of the issue, and the whole process could take a long time.

Chávez said what Kiwi has done is basically plugged into a citywide system. All of Kiwi’s robots are now displayed on a city dashboard so if one accidentally stops and blocks a curb, officials knows exactly where it is and can alert Kiwi right away.

As part of today’s announcement, Kiwi also said that it now has partnerships with Shopify and Ordermark. This allows businesses and restaurants with accounts with either of those services to easily add Kiwi’s robots to their delivery rosters.

Robots have become a more common means of delivery over the last few months. The pandemic has pushed restaurants and other businesses to adopt contactless delivery procedures, which Kiwi provides. Users order from participating restaurants on their phones select robot delivery and use their phones to unlock the robot cargo compartment when it arrives.

Additionally, robot delivery is just $3.99 per order, which the restaurant can pass on to the consumer. Four bucks to bring a burrito to your feet isn’t that bad, and there are no pesky third-party commissions eating further into a restaurant’s margins (or adding that much to a customer’s bill).

With the pandemic still raging across the country and restaurants being forced to close down again, robotic delivery can also help keep restaurant sales going, which provide much needed sales tax revenue for cities.

The bigger story here, however, might be how Kiwi has pivoted and adapted. When we first covered Kiwi, the company was focused college campus delivery, and was creating its own marketplace of restaurants that required downloading the Kiwi app to use.

First off, colleges shut down, all but eliminating campuses as an avenue for delivery. Starship, which had a number of high-profile college partnerships, had to make a similar municipal pivot.

But Kiwi is a robotics company, so building robots and a consumer marketplace was a big undertaking. So at the beginning of the year the company shifted to its current B2B model. Kiwi has also since the beginning of this year had a partnership with Latin American delivery service Rappi. Since pivoting, Chávez said Kiwi has booked 50 times more revenue than all of last year.

San Jose is just the beginning for Kiwi, as Chavez said that the company has two more high-profile partnerships that he can’t announce yet and the company is in the process of building 500 robots. Kiwi will release them in “squads” of 25 to different locations, with two humans managing and maintaining each squad.

Speaking of squad goals, if you see a Kiwi bot making a food delivery in San Jose, snap a pic and send it to us.

The EPIC-KITCHENS Project is Building a Foundation For Artificial Intelligence in the Kitchen

From the post in 2018:

The ultimate goal behind EPIC-KITCHENS is to create an open dataset about kitchen-centric objects, behavior, and interactions upon which researchers across the world can then focus their deep-learning algorithms on in the hope of advancing artificial intelligence in the kitchen.

Since those early days, the project has continued to progress, recently releasing a newly expanded dataset and publishing the results from the second annual challenge. The first research challenge, completed in 2019, was focused researchers building models that can recognize actions in the kitchen. The recently completed challenge focused on action anticipation, where they asked researchers to predict what action would take place after one second of video.

Researchers who competed in the most research challenge include teams from a variety of universities spanning the globe from Cambridge to Georgia to Singapore as well as some corporate research labs such as the AI team from Facebook.

I recently caught up with the resesarch lead for EPIC-KITCHENS, Dr. Dima Damen from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, who told me that the various research teams competing used a variety of approaches to help make their systems better at recognizing and predicting actions based on the information from the video.

“There are some people who’ve used audio,” said Damen. “So they’ve used the audio from the video to identify something like opening the tap versus closing the tap. Traditionally, computer vision has relied on just images without like videos without sound.”

“There are some people who looked on a very big set of things, at what happened the past minute, because that’s helping them. And there are people who said, ‘no, I’ll focus on the objects, like where the hand is, where the object is, that’s a better approach.'”

For the next set of challenges, the group is providing a newly expanded set of data and asking them to focus on things such as “test of time”, where they ask if models trained two years ago still perform well and “scalabilty,” where they will have researchers look at whether more data is better.

Part of the expanded data will be a newly broadened dataset called EPIC-KITCHEN-100, where new footage brings the total number of hours of video captured to 100. According to Damen, the new video is from a cohort that included participants from both the previous study (half of the original 32 participants agreed to participate again) and 8 new participants.

According to Damen, by bringing back past participants, it will allow the computer models to better understand kitchen behavior by factoring in what happens with the passage of time, like in real life, but also better understanding how small changes can impact the results.

“It’s the natural progression, like how life will be,” said Damen. “The question is what happens to computer vision in the meanwhile? So it’s tiny tiny changes, right? It’s a slightly new camera, people might have moved home, and then we’re asking more questions that we believe would be interest to the community.”

Damen said she hopes that her technology can help build better technology and systems that could be of help to humans who need assistance.

“So there are new questions that are being asked which, interestingly, even the assistive technology community is not talking about. As in, if you want to help someone, sometimes you can guess what they’re doing, but many times you can’t.”

Spoon Plus Subscribers can read the full transcript of our conversation and watch my video interview with Daman below.

Miso Robotics Expands Equity Crowdfunding Efforts to the UK

Miso Robotics, maker of Flippy the robot cook, announced yesterday that it has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign in the UK on the CrowdCube platform.

Equity crowdfunding is a way of raising money from everyday investors instead of institutional investment sources. CrowdCube funders can invest as little as £10 to own a piece of Miso.

This is the second equity crowdfunding campaign for Miso, which opened one on SeedInvest here in the U.S. back in April with the goal of raising $30 million. That $30 million seems to be a global fundraising goal (yesterday’s press release states Miso is looking to raise £24 million worldwide, which is roughly $30 million USD). We’ve reached out to Miso to clarify.

According to the CrowdCube campaign page, it looks like Miso has already surpassed its UK-specific goal of £1,201,904 and has raised £2,544,720 (~$ 3.2 million USD) from 292 investors with 20 days still left to go. Coincidentally, $3.2 million is what Miso has raised in the U.S. via SeedInvest so far.

Miso’s UK crowdfunding campaign comes just one day after the company announced that U.S. fast food chain, White Castle, was using Flippy to operate the fry station in a pilot program at one of its Chicago locations. This was the first non-investor customer for Flippy, which has also gone to work at CaliBurger as well as the Dodger and Diamondback baseball stadiums.

Miso has raised $13.1 million in traditional funding, with its last round being a Series B back in February of 2018. There are actually a number of startups that have turned to equity crowdfunding in recent years including Small Robot Company (also on CrowdCube), as well as Winc, Mellow and GoSun. Equity crowdfunding helps alleviate some of the scaling pressures that come with institutional money, but also removes some of the institutional knowledge and connections that come with VCs.

Miso appears to be catching on so far with UK investors, now we need to see how many paying customers Flippy can rack up across the pond as well.

The Feast App Launches to Help Log What You Eat

With so many people taking pictures of their meals, why not put that to good use and make those pics part of a pathway to healthier living? That’s the gist behind Feast, a new iOS app that officially launched today.

Feast is basically a photo diary for everything you consume, from full breakfasts to cans of Diet Coke. Unlike other food logging apps out there, Feast is not interested in having you count calories or macronutrients or providing you with any real data about what you consume. “I think the general public are not into macronutrient breakdown,” Brad Kim, Feast Co-Founder and CEO told me by phone earlier this month, “It flusters and confuses them.”

Instead, Feast meant to be an easy way to simply snap a photo of everything you eat, so you can get a broader understanding of what you consume on a daily basis. You can also take a selfie to help illustrate your state of mind when you at. “Feast puts a mirror on yourself, so that you can self-reflect and become self-aware and self-correct,” Feast Co-Founder and CEO, Jackie Kim said during that same call.

Feast does offer weight tracking and even has it’s own homegrown AI assistant, dubbed “Sid,” that uses machine learning to help automatically identify and log food you’re taking pictures.

In a way Feast trying to be like an Instagram for eating (though one could argue Instagram is the Instagram for eating). You can edit your photos, make them public, and follow other individual feeds.

Feast isn’t the only visual food journal app out there. Both Foodvisor and Bite.ai offer food photojournaling, but both of those apps use AI to surface nutritional information about what you’re eating. And with YesHealth, users can share photos of their meals with nutritionists and get access to personlized coaching to reach weight goals.

Connecting its users with dieticians and nutritionists is on Feast’s product roadmap. The app is free to use right now, but during our call Brad Kim told me that potential ways for the company (which is bootstrapped) to make money include licensing it out to medical professionals who want to monitor what their clients eat, creating an online marketplace where Feast users could hire nutritionists, and, of course advertising.

Feast is built on an interesting premise — that when it comes to healthier eating, more data about what we consume can lead to less success. And on some level, this makes sense. Just looking back and seeing that I grabbed a handful of Wheat Thins eight times in one day is probably just as useful as knowing numerically how bad Wheat Thins are for me. Now that Feast is live on iOS (Android app to follow later this year), we’ll see if this less is more can get more people to eat less.

White Castle Hires Flippy the Robot for Pilot Program

Robots are storming White Castle! The pop culturally iconic restaurant chain just announced a partnership with Miso Robotics today to bring Flippy the robot on board as a fry cook as part of a limited pilot program.

White Castle will be using the new Flippy ROAR, which debuted earlier this year. Unlike previous versions of the robot, the ROAR is suspended overhead on a rail, sliding back and forth. Flippy will be manning several frying stations at White Castle, cooking up a variety of foods including fries, chicken rings, onion rings and mozzarella sticks.

Jamie Richardson, Vice President, Government and Shareholder Relations at White Castle, told me by phone last week that Flippy will be “coming soon” to an undisclosed location in Chicago.

The partnership comes amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has restaurants of all sizes reconfiguring to accommodate less human-to-human interaction. Robots are one way to reduce human contact with food, but Richardson said that White Castle started talking with Miso 15 months ago, long before the pandemic hit in full. “The unexpected events of COVID made us want to accelerate,” Richardson said, “We do think it’s important to keep marching forward with innovation.”

Robots can also be used to take over more dangerous and repetitive tasks in the kitchen, like operating the fryer. A robot won’t get bored, tired or burned making tater tots for hours on end. “A new hire like Flippy frees us up to have team members do other things like delivery,” said Richardson. Delivery and other forms of off-premises eating, of course, have become more important than ever during this pandemic as dine-in experiences have been forced to close.

For Miso, the White Castle deal comes at a time when the company is trying to raise $30 million through equity crowdfunding. As of now, Miso only has two customers using Flippy, CaliBurger and Compass Group/Levy, both of which are investors in Miso. As well, two current Flippy installation sites are stadiums, which have been shut down because of the pandemic.

With 365 owned and operated restaurants, White Castle represents a big growth opportunity for Miso. Financial terms of this deal weren’t disclosed, but the sticker price on a new Flippy ROAR costs $30,000 upfront with a $1,500 monthly subscription.

Despite having been around for nearly 100 years, White Castle remains remarkably spry. It was among the first restaurant chains to add the plant-based Impossible burger to its menu back in 2018. And as noted previously, it has been active with its third-party delivery program.

With this one installation set to start, we’ll have to see if Flippy becomes king of this particular castle.

GROW Accelerator Unveils the 12 Companies Picked for Its Singapore Food Bowl Program

Singapore Food Bowl, a food-focused startup program backed by AgFunder’s GROW accelerator, today announced the 12 startups chosen for its first-ever cohort. While those companies vary in terms of what they do and offer, all of them are working towards the same underlying goal: to build a more sustainable food system that’s more decentralized and able to stand up to unexpected, unprecedented crises like COVID-19. 

That’s an especially urgent goal in Singapore, a country that relies on imports for about 90 percent of its food. To address this, the Singapore government recently created the 30 by 30 initiative, where the city-state aims to have 30 percent of its food grown locally by 2030. Reaching that goal will require a substantial amount of food tech and alternative farming methods, since Singapore has very little in the way of arable land. 

Hence, programs like Singapore Food Bowl which is tied to the 30 by 30 initiative and also supported by Enterprise Singapore and Dole Packaged Foods. 

John Friedman, director at GROW and AgFunder Asia, said in today’s announcement that the program is “providing a platform not only to accelerate innovation in the local agrifood tech ecosystem, but also to raise awareness across broader society of the need for transformation and greater sustainability throughout our food system.”

AgFunder unveiled the 12 chosen startups this morning: 

  • Augmentus: A code-free robotics automation platform built for use in settings like urban farming
  • CocoPallet: Makes shipping pallets from byproducts of coconut farming for use in the global logistics industry
  • Crust Group: Uses leftover bread from hotels, restaurants, and cafes to create craft beers and other beverages
  • DiMuto: Uses internet-of-things and blockchain to digitize the supply chain for better visibility for both suppliers and customers
  • Fortuna Cools: Uses coconut husks to make a cheaper and biodegradable alternative to traditional iceboxes
  • Invertigro: A modular indoor farming system with specialized crop recipes companies can integrate into their existing business models
  • ListenField: An IoT-enabled app that gives farmers actionable data on crop and climate analysis
  • Lleaf: Developing a polymer film that can be applied to greenhouse panels to increase crop yields
  • Mi Terro: Turns spoiled milk into an odorless, temperature-regulating fabric that can be used for clothes, bedding, and food packaging.
  • Organic Technology Holdings: Repurposes organic waste for pet foods, aquafeed, flavor additives, and health supplements
  • SingCell: Provides biotech development and manufacturing services to help cultured meat companies get to market faster.
  • Smoocht: A “r’ice cream” maker that uses organic brown rice milk to make plant-based desserts

Given the state of the pandemic, the 12-week program is completely virtual. It’s in session right now and will run through mid-September.

Aramark Uses AWM Tech for Automated Convenience Store in CA Apartment Community

In addition to a fitness center, a dog park, and a rooftop pool (complete with a 16-foot LED screen), the Nineteen01 apartment complex in Santa Ana, CA now has its own automated convenience store.

The QuickEats Close Convenience from Aramark opened yesterday and features cashierless checkout technology from AWM Smart Shelf. The store is open to the general public and to shop. Customers just need to download the QuickEats Close Convenience mobile app, which they scan upon entry. A mix of cameras, computer vision and AI track what is taken and the shopper is charged automatically when they exit the store.

Greenwood & McKenzie, the real estate investment firm that owns Nineteen01, claims in the press announcement that this is the first such automated convenience store in Southern California. Which might technically be true in that QuickEats is a convenience store. However, Swiftly has powered cashierless checkout at Zion Market in Southern California since last year.

While Quick Eats may not truly be the first cashierless store in SoCal, it is the first one we’ve heard of being built as an amenity in an apartment complex. It’s basically offering a corner store that doesn’t require human staffing and is more convenient for residents (especially for residents cocooning in place during the pandemic). It’s easy to imagine other large apartment complexes implementing similar stores as a benefit to attracting and retaining residents.

It’s also worth noting that AWM is powering the automation for Quick Eats. There are a lot of cashierless checkout startups out there (Zippin, Grabango, etc.), so it’s worth watching to see if AWM carves out its own niche with this type of residential retail.

I expect we’ll see a lot more cashierless applications pop up in the coming months as the pandemic continues and people demand more contactless options.

Bright Idea! Saga Robotics Uses UV Light to Kill Crop Mildew

Ultra-Violet light is having a moment because of its germ and virus killing capabilities. While there is a lot of interest in using UV light inside food delivery lockers and vehicles, a Norwegian company called Saga Robotics is using UV light to kill off mildew on crops like strawberries and grapes.

We came across Saga’s robotic platform this week via a story in The Finger Lake Times. Saga’s technology is being used to combat Erysiphe necator in local vineyards. Erysiphe necator is a powdery mildew that attacks a range of plants and can thrive in areas with high humidity and moderate temperatures.

Dubbed “Thorvald,” the autonomous robot can be outfitted with a bank of lights that shine UV rays on plants to help kill the mildew. The trick, however, is that the light treatment must be done close to nightfall because the darkness inhibits the mildew from repairing itself. You can read a deeper explanation of the process and its history at The Finger Lake Times.

What’s interesting about Saga’s technology is that it kills this mildew without a pesticide, so you can reduce the amount of chemicals used in the growing process. Because the Saga robot is self-driving, you can have it run autonomously and don’t need to divert labor and other resources towards spraying.

Saga is part of a bigger wave of agriculture robotics hitting farms. Augean Robotics makes the Burro, which hauls equipment and crops around a farm. And Small Robotics Company has a trio of robots in development to help around the farm including one that zaps weeds with electricity.

This type of automation should hopefully usher in an era of precision agriculture that is more efficient with water usage and less reliant on harsh chemicals. That is something we’ll gladly shine a light on.

AiFi to Launch 330 Autonomous Stores by the End of 2021

AiFi, a cashierless checkout startup, announced today that it will deploy 330 new and retrofitted autonomous stores globally by the end of 2021.

AiFi is perhaps best known for its NanoStore, a fully automated pre-fab pop-up retail experience packed inside a small building akin to a shipping container. AiFi’s Orchestrated Autonomous Store Infrastructure and Services (OASIS) tech platform can also be used to retrofit existing retail spaces with autonomous capabilities, allowing shoppers to simply walk in, grab what they want and leave. The system charges them automatically.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, AiFi’s OASIS technology will be powering 330 new autonomous stores that range anywhere between 800 sq. ft. convenience stores to 10,000 sq. ft. grocery stores. The new stores will be primarily located across the U.S. and Europe, with expansion to other parts of the world planned for the future

The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging across the U.S., which could be accelerating the adoption of autonomous or contactless checkout. Fears over the coronavirus have already caused grocery stores to close down salad and hot bars. Automating checkout would remove the necessity of standing in line with other people, limit cashier exposure to the virus, and obviate the need to interact with a payment terminal that lots of other people have touched throughout the day.

To be sure, eliminating the traditional checkout stand would be a huge undertaking, and large grocery chains aren’t exactly nimble when it comes to implementing new technology. Plus cashierless checkout brings up ethical issues around serving populations that are underbanked. Perhaps, however, AiFi will be taking a page out of Zippin’s playbook and only automating part (like one aisle) of a partner’s store rather than retrofitting the entire building.

We won’t have to wait long to see. AiFi says that it is already powering 10 stores in locations around the world including California, Texas, Amsterdam, Paris and Shanghai. AiFi also has partnerships with Albert Heijn, Carrefour, and others it has yet to announce. If AiFi sticks to its schedule, it will be launching an average of 18 stores per month for the next year and a half.

Glacierfire’s Ice+Fries Seems Like Everything You’d Want from an Icelandic Robot Bar

Iceland is having a bit of a moment right now, thanks to the success of Netflix’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, which stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as Icelandic singers. Oh, and also because Glacierfire launched a robotic bar/restaurant called Ice+Fries there a couple months back.

Ice+Fries features two robotic arms, dubbed Tipsy Floki and Ragnar, that can mix up to 100 cocktails per hour and 1,500 cocktails a day without human intervention. It also sports a 3D printer that prints out fancy desserts and garnishes for drinks. There’s even a robotic Aibo dog that wanders the bar. But the automation is woven much more deeply into the very fabric of the restaurant.

I spoke with Glacierfire CEO Priyesh Patel by phone this week, who explained some of the smarts that goes into the restaurant. The robo-bartenders themselves are made by Makr Shakr, but Glacierfire has integrated its own software stack that keeps the bar running, including order management, timesheets, ingredient/temperature monitoring, etc. There is also a healthy amount of artificial intelligence (AI) implemented.

Patel explained how they use the AI with facial recognition for a number of different purposes. The facial recognition will guide people as to where they pick up their orders. It can also be used in determining if there are underaged people trying to order alcoholic drinks (the drinking age in Iceland is 20). The AI+facial recogntion combo is also used to gauge sentiment in the bar. (i.e., Are customers happy?) Your mileage may vary on whether or not you find that kind of monitoring useful or creepy.

Ice+Fries isn’t completely human-less. The food is still cooked by people, and there are technicians on hand to deal with the robots. But in building the automated experience Patel echoed the sentiment of many food robot companies: If you can use robots to lower labor costs, then you can pass that savings on to the consumer. Patel said that cocktails in Iceland are typically $15 per drink, but Ice+Fries can serve them at $10.

Ice+Fries has only been open since April in Iceland, so we have yet to prove that those economics bear out. Here in the U.S., Miso Robotics found that its first generation of Flippy robots were too expensive for many QSRs. Robot barista Cafe X had to shutter its downtown locations, and robot burger joint, Creator, recently closed its restaurant down as well.

To be fair, Creator’s shutdown was more attributable to the global pandemic that closed dine in operations at restaurants around the country. According to Patel, Iceland was able to avoid COVID-induced lockdowns. But as the virus continues to rage on here in the U.S., Ice & Fries might actually model what a restaurant will look like post-pandemic.

Setting aside the close quarters and inside nature of the restaurant for a moment, the Ice & Fries experience is contactless, a key feature in these coronavirus times. While orders can be done on a touchscreen, there is also a mobile app customers can use, and robot bartenders remove one more vector of human-to-human viral transmission.

The first Ice+Fries is located in Reykjavik, Iceland, but the company has plans for expansions into Lisbon, Portugal, and Paris, France. Patel said Galcierfire has a two-pronged go-to market strategy for this robot restaurant concept. The first is to build out and launch its own branded restaurants, and the second it to license the Ice+Fries technology out to third-party restaurant companies looking to create similar concepts.

Who knows? If this takes off, we could all be singing an Icelandic song of Ice+Fries.

Pudu Tech Raised More than $15M as the Server Robot Space Heats Up

Pudu Technology, which makes autonomous server robots used in hospitality settings, announced yesterday a funding round of more than $15 million, according to VentureBeat.

The Shenzen, China-based Pudu makes a number of self-driving robots equipped with a rack of trays to shuttle food and drinks to and from customers inside a restaurant. Pudu introduced the BellaBot, which sports cat-like features and even makes a cute LED-face when you pet it, at this year’s CES.

Pudu’s funding comes at the right time, as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced restaurants and bars to reduce the amount of human contact during table service. Server robots like Pudu’s provide a way to reduce at least one point of human-to-human interaction while dining out.

But Pudu will also need the funding because the robot server space is getting increasingly crowded. In the VentureBeat story, Pudu claims has 2,000 customers including Sheraton and JD.com, across 20 countries. Rival Keenon Robotics, server bot company based in China, says that it has 6,000 robots in action and that it can produce 30,000 robots a year.

Over in Korea, Woowa Bros. partnered with consumer electronics giant LG to develop and expand its robot waiter program. In Spain, Macco Robotics launched its Dbot modular server robot. And here in the U.S., Bear Robotics, raised $32 million earlier this year for its Penny robot server.

All of this is to say that there are a lot of companies looking to bring robot servers to your restaurant. So much so, that as I wrote back in February, they could become a commodity:

It feels like restaurant server robots are on their way to becoming less of a novelty and will soon be a commodity. They all do the same thing — carry food. They are meant to do the grunt work so humans don’t have to. So the feature set will be the same: Take food to table > carry food without spilling > avoid humans and other obstacles along the way.

Sure, there are enhancements that can be made, or perhaps there’s a unique way to move food from the robot to the table. But there really isn’t much else for the robot to do. Server robots will become a commodity, and whichever company creates the cheapest robot that does a decent job will win.

Given the debate and debacle around re-opening restaurants here in the U.S., and restaurant workers test positive for COVID, we could see a rise in demand for restaurant robots. And it looks like there are plenty of companies ready if that demand comes.

Refraction AI Officially Launches Robot Grocery Delivery in Ann Arbor, MI

Refraction AI, which makes the three-wheeled autonomous REV-1 delivery vehicle, announced today that it is expanding beyond restaurant meals and into grocery delivery.

The company’s robots are delivering around a three-mile radius in Ann Arbor, MI, and today’s announcement is basically an official unveiling of a program that the company has been testing for months.

If you are in the Ann Arbor delivery and want to check out the delivery service, visit this site that Refraction has created. The company is working with a local grocer called The Produce Station, and it looks like the process is a little kludgey right now. Customers need to visit Produce Station’s Mercato store to see what items are available, and then manually enter the items they want into special form on Refraction’s site. The robot is then dispacted to the store where staffers pack the items into the vehicle before it drivers itself to the delivery location.

It’s understandable that Refraction’s process might not be the smoothest. After all, the company is in the robot business, not the e-commerce business. But it makes me wonder how how the company will connect consumers and robots as it grows beyond Ann Arbor? Will restaurants and grocers have their own REV-1s running back and forth? Or will a third-party delivery service like DoorDash have a fleet of them deployed to make deliveries? Or will it be a combination of both?

Autonomous robot deliveries are attracting more attention during this COVID-19 pandemic as they can reduce human-to-human interactions and, hopefully, human-to-human viral transmission.

Refraction’s REV-1 is a Goldilocks robot, in that its size is right in between the small cooler-sized rover bots of Starship and the big pod-like vehicles of Nuro. This sweet spot of a size, plus the REV-1’s ability to handle inclement weather was one of the reasons we named Refraction AI to our 2020 Food Tech 25 list of innovative companies.