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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

delivery robot

Delivers AI Robots Making Deliveries in Turkey

You know those RVs that have a map of the U.S. on their spare tire cover? The maps illustrating where those driving nomads have been? I should get a map like that, only of the countries of the world and fill it in wherever delivery robots pop up, given how quickly those li’l rover bots are proliferating around the globe.

In addition to the U.S., England, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia (and more that I’m unaware of at this time), we can add Turkey to the delivery robot list, thanks to Delivers AI.

Delivers AI - Autonomous Delivery Robot / Europe

Like Starship, Woowa Brothers and Yandex, Delivers AI also creates cooler-sized robots that autonomously wheel around sidewalks and streets to make food and grocery deliveries. Delivers AI robots travel 6 -- 7 km/hour and can carry 15 kg (33 lbs.). They are equipped with camera, LiDAR and radar to detect and avoid obstacles, people and traffic. While the robots are autonomous, a human still monitors and supervises the robot while it travels.

Right now, Delivers AI robots are making commercial deliveries in Instanbul, Turkey. According to an email from Delivers AI Founder and CEO, Ali Kutay YARALI, his company will have 10 robots in Q1 of 2021, growing its fleet to 100 robots in a year and 1,000 robots in two years. The company has raised $350,000 from undisclosed investors.

Yarali said the company is focused on the European market and will be working with stakeholders there to develop a legal and technical framework for autonomous robotic deployment there.

One factor that could accelerate adoption of delivery robots in Europe is the ongoing pandemic and continued desire for more contactless experiences when it comes to how we get our food. Robots can provide more human-free interactions when for food ordering and delivery. Additionally, robots can operate for long stretches of time without needing a break.

One thing I will be needing is a bigger map.

Panasonic Testing Delivery Robots in Japanese Smart Town

Electronics giant Panasonic announced today that it has started testing autonomous delivery robots on public roads in the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town in Japan. Initial tests started in November; the company aims to begin home delivery tests in February of 2021.

Panasonic said the this first phase will include the home delivery of “packages and products using a smartphone app.” While food wasn’t specifically mentioned in the press release, the company pointed out the growth of food delivery and lack of labor to carry out those deliveries. Additionally, Panasonic talked about the growing need for contactless delivery options, thanks to the pandemic.

Panasonic got permission from Fujisawa City authorities to begin its self-driving tests. The autonomous robots will be connected via a public network, and a human operator will monitor the robots from a control center and take over driving should the need arise.

The city of Fujisawa itself sounds interesting. From Panasonic’s press announcement:

Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town is an urban development project located on the former site of Panasonic’s factory in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture, with the participation of 18 groups including Panasonic and Fujisawa City. As a real smart town where more than 2,000 people live, it is working on sustainable urban development while also aiming to solve issues facing society and the community through the implementation of mechanisms jointly designed by the companies, local governments, and residents involved with the town, and through the creation of new services.

Panasonic’s delivery robot move is part of a broader trend, as we see cities from around the world begin rolling out delivery robots on public streets. In Russia, Yandex robots are making restaurant deliveries in Moscow. The Postmates Serve robot is making deliveries from the Pink Dot market in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. And Woowa Brothers delivery robots have started making food deliveries in Seoul, South Korea.

We’ve seen an increase in robot activity since the pandemic forced restaurants, grocery and delivery services to establish contactless delivery options. Robots can remove at least one form of human-to-human interaction when getting your food. But robots have other advantages as well, such as the ability to work around the clock and potentially bring down the cost of delivery, making it more affordable to more people.

But as Panasonic’s announcement shows, there are still legal and technical hurdles that need to be overcome. Even in the smart town it helped form, Panasonic still needs to get permits and run tests before it can dive right in to dropping by someone’s front door.

Yandex Robots Roaming Russia Delivering Restaurant Meals

Robots from Yandex, a tech giant which is kind of like Russia’s Google, have started making restaurant deliveries in the Russian cities of Moscow and Innopolis, the company announced in a corporate blog post today.

The Yandex.Rover robots are six-wheeled, cooler-sized robots similar to those from Starship and Kiwibot. They work in conjunction with Yandex.Eats, the company’s restaurant and grocery delivery service that has more than 30,000 merchants across 166 cities. Via the YandexEats app, users select their desired restaurant and choose the delivery-robot option to get their food delivered by one of the company’s bots. When the order arrives, recipients unlock the bot with their mobile phone.

Yandex’s blog post didn’t mention how many delivery robots are in its fleet in each city, or how big the service areas are. It did note that its robots are delivering in the White Square district, which is in central Moscow and home to many cafes and restaurants, and that robot delivery is free in Innopolis. Yandex said its robots can also handle inclement weather, which I imagine is an important feature for Russian winters.

The global pandemic has increased interest in robot delivery in part because of its contactless nature. Robots don’t get sick and can theoretically work around the clock. In recent months we’ve seen a number of rover robot deployments in different parts of the world. The City of San Jose partnered with Kiwibot over the summer to enable restaurant delivery. Save Mart in Modesto, California started delivering groceries via Starship’s robots. Pink Dot started making robot deliveries via Postmate’s Serve robot in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. And in South Korea, Woowa Brothers started making robot deliveries to an apartment complex in Seoul.

As part of its announcement, Yandex said that in addition to delivering restaurant meals, its robots would also be making grocery deliveries in the future.

City By the Bot: Postmates Gets Permit to Test its “Serve” Delivery Robot in San Francisco

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 program since then. Serve is a cooler sized robot on wheels that can carry 50 pounds, go 25 miles on a charge and uses a combination of cameras, lidar and human assistance when needed to navigate.

But perhaps more intriguing than the robot itself is the city it will, errr, Serve. In December of 2017, the city of San Francisco enacted tight restrictions on the use of commercial sidewalk robots. At the time, San Francisco’s robot ban was seen as part of its attempt by the city to get ahead of a technology issue and avoid the civic complications things like ridesharing and corporate commuter busses created.

But while San Francisco clamped down, nearby cities like Berkeley and Sacramento and other towns across the country like Phoenix and Houston rolled out the welcome mat for delivery robots… at least for testing. Perhaps San Francisco felt that getting ahead of any robotic problems could wind up leaving it behind.

Postmates told TechCrunch that it has “…been eager to work directly with cities to seek a collaborative and inclusive approach to robotic deployment that respects our public rights of way, includes community input, and allows cities to develop thoughtful regulatory regimes,”

The robot delivery sector is certainly heating up this year. In addition to Postmates, rivals Kiwi and Starship have been heading to college campuses, Amazon is testing out its Scout robot in Irivine, CA, and Refraction AI just recently launched its three-wheeled autonomous delivery vehicle.

Postmates raised $100 million at the beginning of this year and is expected to go public later this year. If they follow through, perhaps a robot could ring the opening bell.

Starship More Than Doubled its Robot Delivery Fleet at George Mason University

High school graduation happened last night in my town, which means in a matter of months, most of those kids will be heading off to college. And maybe, if they are lucky, they’ll be heading off to a college that has delivery robots.

As we’ve covered throughout the year, companies like Starship and Kiwi are bringing their li’l rover robots to college campuses like George Mason University, Northern Arizona University, UC Berkeley, Purdue, Cornell, NYU, Stanford, and Harvard. These delivery robots scurry about to bring hungry students snacks and meals.

At George Mason in particular, Starship’s robots are proving quite popular. According to an article yesterday in The Chronicle of Higher Education, George Mason has more than doubled it robot delivery fleet since January, adding 23 robots to the initial order of 20. And GMU is not stopping there: the university plans to add another 15 to the fleet in the fall.

That’s a lot of robots roaming about the quad.

In addition to adding more ‘bots, the popularity of robots also has the school imposing some limits. Starship told me during an interview earlier this year that though the robots could make deliveries 24/7, George Mason limits delivery hours so as not to interfere with students’ sleeping habits.

I used Kiwi’s robot delivery service at Berkeley earlier this year, and while it had its hiccups, the overall experience felt like living in the future. The ability to order food from your phone and have it delivered wherever you have on campus brings news levels of convenience that busy/lazy college students will quickly get used to.

Kiwi Delivery Robots Expand into Los Angeles

If you live in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, you can see sunshine, the occasional movie star, and now delivery robots shuttling food to hungry local denizens.

According to the Daily Bruin, Kiwi Campus started rolling out its delivery robots at the beginning of this month. Westwood is home to UCLA, so this particular expansion makes sense given that Kiwi already operates at and around UC Berkeley.

A spokesperson for Kiwi told the Daily Bruin that the company picked UCLA because of the compact nature of the campus. It probably doesn’t hurt that LA typically has great weather throughout the year, thereby reducing at least one bit of complexity for the autonomous, cooler-sized robots to navigate around.

Kiwi is working with 15 Westwood businesses including Subway, Jamba Juice and Veggie Grill. For now, however, robot deliveries are only being made off campus as Kiwi doesn’t have the necessary permits for them to scurry around campus. Until those are sorted out Kiwi will offer a human delivery person for on-campus deliveries.

Campuses in general are becoming a popular option for robot delivery companies. Earlier this year Kiwi rival Starship announced that it would be deploying 1,000 delivery robots by the end of this year and that campuses (both academic and corporate) would be a major avenue of growth for them.

Starting with campuses is a smart idea for robot delivery. They are like starter cities. First, you have a sizeable audience of students and workers who spend most of their time there. Working on campuses (at least private ones) can also help sidestep some of the municipal legal issues that come with running robots on city streets. Campuses are also typically well maintained, so roads and walkways won’t have as many hazards to navigate.

You might think students would be excited to have futuristic, self-driving robots running around their campus. But the reactions reported by the Daily Bruin were much more negative. Rather than a marvel of technology, students quoted saw them as easy targets for theft, causes of increased congestion and basically just something that won’t catch on.

Of course, if I had movie stars in my backyard, I may feel the same way (but maybe with this expansion Uber will give Kiwi a closer look).