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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Pudu Robotics

Pudu Server Robots Find Work in Grocery Aisles

Up to this point, when we’ve covered floor robots in grocery stores, the news has usually been about autonomous shelf scanners and floor cleaners. But as a recently released video from Pudu Robotics shows, we could soon be seeing robots that act as mobile advertising and promotional displays roaming around grocery aisles.

Amy Zhou, a Business Development Manager at Pudu Robotics, posted a video on Linkedin this week showing her company’s robots being put to work in various grocery stores around the world. The work shown in the video isn’t terribly exciting, as its mainly a lone robot carrying racks of food items that are on sale. But the move is another example of the mobile commerce trend that I predicted will have a breakout year in 2021.

Pudu’s move into grocery is reminiscent of Cheetah Mobile’s FANBOT, though FANBOT is a little more complex. Where Pudu’s robot just roams around carrying items that you then must purchase at the stores checkout, the FANBOT actually carries an inventory of different items and carries out the transaction to purchase them on the spot.

The idea is bringing commerce to where you are, rather than having you seek it out.

Pudu’s type of robotic mobile advertising could be appealing to grocery retailers. Having a mobile robot or two would give retailers another vehicle (literally) on which they could charge for placement/advertising. As a bonus, multiple, different promotions could be run in a single day. Heck, you could combine the dynamism of a Cooler Screen LED panel with the Pudu robot and have a big, bright, shiny commercial going up and down the aisles.

These types of promo robots might also find more acceptance within grocery stores themselves. Walmart ended its use of Bossa Nova’s shelf-scanning robots this year reportedly in part over concerns with how customers were reacting to the robots. There’s a difference between seeing a six-foot tall robot scanning a shelf and spotting a tray of chocolate bars headed in your direction.

Additionally, these type of self-wandering promo robots wouldn’t be taking a current job (like inventory management) away from a human, but rather adding a new one.

Plus — and this could be the biggest reason we’ll see more of Pudu’s robots in stores — at least one model is has cat-like features and makes a cute face when you pet it.

Pudu Robotics Raises $15M in Series B+ Round

Chinese delivery robot company Pudu Robotics (aka Pudu Tech) announced this week that it has completed a Series B+ round of nearly $15 million in funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital China with participation from existing investors Meituan, Everwin Investment, QC Capital, and Chengbohan Fund.

Pudu makes self-driving restaurant server robots equipped with racks of trays that can shuttle plates of food and empty dishes to and from the kitchen.

This B+ funding comes on the heels of Pudu Robotics’ Series B fundraise of $15 million, which the company announced on July 1 of this year. The B+ round brings the total amount of announced funding raised by Pudu to roughly $30 million. (Crunchbase lists prior Series A, Seed and Angel rounds of undisclosed amounts.)

According to today’s press announcement, Pudu’s robots have been sold to more than 20 countries and regions around the world. Earlier this month, Pudu announced that the Muhguri restaurant is Sokcho, South Korea now had 11 Pudu robots serving food to customers.

Pudu is certainly not alone in creating a new robotic labor force for restaurants. Other players in the space include fellow Chinese company Keenon Robotics, California-based Bear Robotics, and South Korea’s Woowa Bros., which has partnered with LG for server bots.

Pudu said this latest funding would be used to expand its market. The money is coming just as the global pandemic has restaurants reassessing their dine-in businesses. Server robots like Pudu’s remove one possible vector of human-to-human viral transmission, and come with the added benefit of not getting sick themselves.

While that may be good news in terms of not spreading the coronavirus, the increased use of robots means fewer jobs for humans. A recent survey from Aaron Allen & Associates found that more than 80 percent of restaurant jobs could be automated, with the majority of them being server positions.

That stat, of course, brings up a host of other societal issues, but right now, most people are pre-occupied with the more immediate pandemic-related problems.