Serve Robotics Inc. and Wing Aviation announced a pilot program this week that will combine their delivery methods to extend the reach of restaurant deliveries across densely populated urban areas. According to the announcement, Serve’s robots will collect orders from restaurant curbsides and transport them to Wing’s AutoLoader hubs, where Wing’s drones will carry the packages to customers up to six miles away.
Serve Robotics spun out of Uber in 2021 and has since worked with the likes of Uber Eats and 7-Eleven. According to the company, its robots have completed tens of thousands of deliveries in urban markets. For its part, Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says it has racked up 400,000 commercial deliveries across three continents, working with food delivery partners like DoorDash.
This announcement is interesting because it represents the first integration of sidewalk and aerial delivery. I’ll be watching if this thing ever moves out of pilot since, as drone delivery has moved significantly slower in terms of rollout than many providers had hoped, and combining it with sidewalk delivery adds another potential complication that could trip up cautious delivery operators and restaurants.
However, if Serve can nail handoffs at Drone pick-up areas as suggested in the video (the choppy editing looks a bit suspect to me), I can see this becoming a real peanut butter and jelly combo for quick deployment of food.
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