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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

robot delivery

Delivery ‘Bots from Starship and Postmates Spotted in the Wild on Both Coasts

We’ve been covering the acceleration of robots being rolled out for contactless food deliveries in different cities across the country. As these li’l rover ‘bots become more public, the public is catching their first glimpse of, and shooting video of, our food delivery future.

Starship recently started making restaurant and grocery deliveries in Chevy Chase, VA. That’s where Jake Tapper, host of CNN’s State of the Union caught not one but two Starship robots scurrying about in the rain and posted a video of them to Twitter.

Tapper wrote “I assume for food delivery? Still a bit @blackmirror,” which struck us as a bit odd. Black Mirror is the sci-fi anthology TV series that shows the dark side of our reliance/addiction to technology. But Tapper seems to be ignoring the fact that we are already living in the darkest timeline where human-to-human contact is fraught with anxiety and potentially danger, and technology like autonomous robots can actually be useful and could save lives.

As a reminder for Mr. Tapper, robots don’t get sick, won’t inadvertently cough on your broccoli and can help get food to people who may not be able to otherwise leave home. Not everything about robots is perfect, obviously. Robot companies like Starship are charging restaurants big commissions that might be unsustainable, and there are always are big, societal questions about automation and the cost of human jobs. But right now, we should absolutely be experimenting with more self-driving deliveries.

Over the West Coast, friend of The Spoon, Mike R., saw the Postmates Serve robot cruising down a Los Angeles city street. With its lit up eyes and bright color, the cheery robot certainly seemed to fit in with sunny California vibe. An “On Delivery” message displayed on its screen to let passers by know it was on a job as it quietly rolled on its own down the sidewalk (followed, appropriately enough, by someone on a scooter wearing a facemask).

Postmates Serve Robot Out on Delivery

For those living in the middle of the country, fret not. Self-driving delivery robots won’t be relegated to the coasts. Up in Ann Arbor, MI, Refraction’s REV-1 is making lunch and grocery deliveries. And Starship is eyeing Frisco, TX among the next cities to get its robot delivery service.

If you see robots running around your town, please shoot a picture or a video and share it with us!

Starship Angling to Make its Robot Food Deliveries in Frisco, TX. Notice the Pattern?

Starship’s small, autonomous food delivery robots could soon be rolling around Frisco, TX. The Community Impact Newspaper in Frisco reports that earlier this week Starship pitched its robotic plans to the town’s city council.

If adopted, Starship’s robots would be making deliveries from local restaurants and grocery stores in that area. More importantly during this COVID-19 pandemic, those deliveries would be done without human-to-human contact.

Community Impact writes that the city council is still working through details with Starship, but it looks like the program will proceed, with a launch announcement expected in the next few weeks.

The expansion into Frisco would follow Starship’s recent deployments to other cities such as Fairfax, VA and Tempe, AZ. One thing Frisco, Fairfax and Tempe all have in common is that they are (relatively) close to a college or university that Starship had previously been serving (University of Texas at Dallas, George Mason University and Northern Arizona University, respectively).

A Starship rep told Community Impact: “With the pandemic, a lot of campuses have emptied out of students. So we have accelerated our long-term plans, which is to offer neighborhood deliveries.”

It would make sense that Starship would take those college robots and let them loose in nearby neighborhoods to make deliveries to the general public. If that logic holds true, we can probably expect to see Starship robots making deliveries in towns near Houston, TX; Madison, WI, Pittsburgh, PA; and West Lafayette, IN.

Robots could have greater appeal as a delivery mechanism given heightened fears people now have of viral transmissions. Robots don’t get sick and can be easily sanitized. This, in combination with working with smaller towns, could make local governments more willing to put autonomous vehicles on their sidewalks.

Prior to the pandemic, cities and states were cautious about allowing robots to run about on public streets and sidewalks. But shelter in place orders across the country have spurred demand for home delivery of food and groceries. Robots, with their ability to run around the clock, can help meet that demand.

We’re already seeing more robots on public streets. In Ann Arbor, MI, Refraction’s REV-1 is making restaurant and grocery deliveries. And in California, Nuro has been given the go ahead to test its autonomous delivery vehicle on public roads.

One thing that could hold robot delivery back, however, is the commission fees it is charging. We learned recently that Starship can charge almost as much as a human-powered third-party delivery service. This seems to defeat the labor cost savings robots are supposed to bring, and not at all helpful to restaurants that are struggling to stay in business. But as Starship pointed out, they are working on an accelerated timeline, and hopefully the company will soon bring more equity to its delivery.

If you’re in one of these towns where robots can bring you food, drop us a line and let us know how it went, and if you’d use them again!

Wait, Robot Delivery Companies Charge the Same Commissions as Human Delivery?

One of the key selling points of our delivery robot future was that it would be less expensive than existing human efforts. Yes, automation would take some human jobs, but the savings would create cheaper food and faster service. But a story out in WIRED today shows that at least right now, robot delivery companies are charging the same commissions as their human counterparts.

The main thrust of the WIRED story is that robot deliveries should be having a big moment during this pandemic. Robots reduce human-to-human contact, can go into dangerous areas, and can operate around the clock. But they aren’t having that big moment, hampered by technical limitations, local regulations, and in some cases — cost.

WIRED highlights two delivery companies: Starship and Refraction. Starship makes cooler-sized robots that are best known in the U.S. for scurrying around a number of college campuses bringing meals and snacks to hungry students. Refraction makes the bigger REV-1, a robust three-wheeled robot that can tackle inclement weather and launched lunch delivery in Ann Arbor, MI at the end of last year.

In Fairfax, VA, where Starship recently started making restaurant deliveries, the owners of the Havabite restaurant told WIRED that Starship is charging them 20 percent commission fees (after a one-month free trial), which they said is more than the restaurant pays GrubHub for delivery.

Up in Michigan, Refraction is charging 15 percent commission on deliveries, which WIRED says is “a rate equal to or lower than that charged by human-powered delivery apps.”

We have reached out to both Starship and Refraction for confirmation clarification. A Refraction rep emailed us the following: “Average delivery fees for a restaurant are typically 30% (like through Doordash or Uber Eats) and [Refraction is] charging half of that. On the consumer side, there is a $3 fee which is about a quarter of the typical order cost. Refraction is also now testing a grocery delivery pilot with zero fees.”

Back in January of 2019, as it was rolling out to its first college campus, Starship told us that it “uses different revenue models depending on location,” and that it “sometimes charge[s] a margin on top of the delivery fee.” For its part, Refraction told us in July of 2019 that it was charging a delivery fee that was better than what Uber is charging.

I get that 2019 was a lifetime ago and a lot has happened since then. I also get that robots ain’t cheap, especially when they are just starting out and haven’t reached scale yet. But human third-party delivery services are being vilified for cutting into the already slim margins of restaurants during this pandemic crisis, so much so that local governments are enforcing caps on delivery commissions. You’d think robot companies, which still have technical and regulatory hurdles to overcome, would want to make them as attractive an alternative as possible.

But maybe that isn’t possible right now. This COVID-19 pandemic is impacting every corner of the economy, including the companies behind these burgeoning robot delivery services. It’s not exactly the easiest time to raise fresh capital to fuel growth. Starship reportedly went through a round of layoffs at the end of March.

Despite all this, the coronavirus has strengthened my belief that robots are the future of delivery, especially in a more socially distant post-pandemic world. Hopefully the economics will work out so robots can help us get through all this to find out.

Starship Robots Making Food Deliveries in Tempe, AZ

If a person dropping food off on your doorstep is still one human too many in these COVID-19 times, then maybe you should try moving to Tempe, AZ where Starship’s autonomous robots have started making restaurant deliveries.

Starship’s li’l rovers are squat, six-wheeled, cooler-sized robots that can scurry around town making deliveries. In a time when people are being asked to shelter in place, autonomous robots can help reduce human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus by, well, not being human.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Starship now has more than 30 autonomous, on-demand robots delivering daily between 10:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. Meals are available from three different Tempe restaurants: Fate Brewing Company, Tempe City Tacos and Venezia’s Pizza. For those in Tempe, the delivery area is bordered by S. Mill Ave. to the east, S. Rural Road to the west, Route 60 to the south and Southern Ave. to the north.

Starship had been focusing its go-to market in the US on colleges, where it has been steadily rolling out on different campuses over the past year. But with the global pandemic forcing schools to send students home and the rising need for contactless delivery, Starship’s shift towards deliveries for the general public makes sense.

Tempe is the third location in the US where Starship has been making non-college deliveries. The company has already begun delivering different restaurants in Washington DC and Irvine, CA. According to a Starship spokesperson, future delivery cities include the City of Fairfax in DC and Moutain View, CA (which will also be testing Nuro’s driverless delivery pods!).

In addition to requiring one less human putting themselves at risk to bring you a burrito, autonomous robots can also run continuously without needing a break, and can be easily cleaned in between trips.

Starship’s robots aren’t the only ones pitching in during these dire times. The Postmates Serve robot has been making deliveries in Los Angeles. On a much larger scale, the CEO of driverless van startup, Udelv, has publicly offered his company’s autonomous delivery services to help make deliveries in quarantined areas.

If you’re in the designated area in Tempe and use Starship’s robot delivery, take a picture and let us know how it went!

Nuro’s Driverless Delivery Vehicles Get Approval to Run on California Roads

Nuro announced today that it has been given permission to operate its driverless delivery vehicles on California’s public roads.

The Nuro R2 is a pod-like, low-speed autonomous vehicle about half the size of a normal car that only travels up to 25 mph. It features two cargo compartments and no area for a human driver or passenger.

Nuro has been on a bit of a regulatory roll this year. In February, the R2 got federal approval to operate on public roads.

But the world is a vastly different place today than it was back in February. With a global pandemic raging across the country and planet, the idea of a humanless means of delivering food seems pretty enticing right now. With trips to the grocery store now constituting a risk of contracting COVID-19, there has been a surge in grocery e-commerce. Instacart and other delivery service have instituted no-contact delivery and arm their workers with gloves and masks. Still, having a robot drive your groceries curbside removes another vector of human-to-human transmission.

It will be awhile before autonomous delivery vehicles like Nuro’s move into the mainstream, though. Previously, Nuro partnered with Walmart and Domino’s Pizza for autonomous delivery in Houston, TX. Given the shelter-in-place orders in California, there is no set timeline for Nuro’s R2 tests to begin other than “soon.” When it does, it will start in Mountain View, before rolling out to Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and eventually the whole state.

Even then, however, Nuro is going to have to work with local governments who are grappling with rapid technological change in real time, let alone a time of pandemic. Hopefully we won’t have to experience another global health crisis like this one in our lifetime. If we do, though, it would be nice to have more autonomous vehicles allowed to take over jobs that are vital, yet suddenly more dangerous, like food delivery.

Starship Robots Deliver Food Over Social Distances at Bowling Green

There is probably some grim metaphor in the fact that while people across the US shelter in place to avoid human contact, robots continue to roll out, making deliveries, unaware of the pandemic that surrounds them.

Ever since this outbreak started, we at The Spoon have wondered why autonomous delivery robots aren’t being used more often, especially in cities. As grocery and restaurant deliveries surge, robots could remove at least one human from the delivery equation (and they are a lot easier to scrub down after each use).

Turns out that Bowling Green State University is still using Starship robots for food delivery on campus, according to the Sentinel-Tribune. At least Jon Zachrich, Bowling Green State University Dining Director of Marketing and Communications, thinks that’s a good thing in these end times.

“I personally think it’s a good opportunity for social distancing, just because your only interaction is going to be with the actual robot, once it comes from our facility,” Zachrich told the Sentinel-Tribune.

He also spilled some factoids that I, as someone who follows the robot space, found interesting. The surface of the robot is non-porous, so it’s easy to clean. Zachrich also outlined some of the sanitizing protocols for the robot, saying that each robot is wiped down with disinfectant and anti-bacterial cleaners after each use.

On a more general interest note, Zachrich also gave us a glimpse as to how many orders the robots were running at Bowling Green before the pandemic. The robots debuted on campus on Feb. 20 and “Orders were quickly maxed out at over 750 per day,” the Sentinel-Tribune writes. Each of those came with $1.99 Starship delivery fee if you want to do the math on revenue generation.

That number has obviously dropped off as Bowling Green, like so many other colleges, has shifted to distance learning. Most restaurants on campus have closed, but the restaurants are still delivering to essential staff on campus and students who remained because they don’t have any other place to go.

This outbreak doesn’t seem to be subsiding anytime soon, especially in this country. With social distancing becoming the new norm, at least for the foreseeable future, perhaps more places will be like Bowling Green and get their own robots rolling across the social distance gap.

West Hollywood Approves Delivery ‘Bots, Missouri Mulls its Own Robot Regs

In addition to random celebrity sightings, residents of West Hollywood, CA will soon be spotting autonomous delivery robots in their neighborhood. Last night the West Hollywood city council approved the use of delivery robots on its city streets (hat tip to WeHoVille).

A trial of the program will start next month with Postmates’ Serve robot and run for 90 days. Serve is a cooler-sized robot that scurries around on four wheels, and while it can run autonomously using sensors and cameras to avoid people and obstacles, the city council is requiring a human chaperone during the trial. Additionally, only three robots can be in operation at once, they can only run during the day, and they aren’t allowed on sidewalks deemed substandard.

Serve has already been making deliveries in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles since the tail end of last year, and the West Hollywood expansion illustrates how cautious local regulators are being when it comes to robots.

Across the country from West Hollywood, state lawmakers in Missouri introduced their own bill to regulate sidewalk delivery robots. The proposed legislation would limit a robot’s weight to 200 lbs, have autonomous driving capabilities, and require an insurance policy of $100,000 to cover any damages.

State and local governments across the country are grappling with rapid innovation like sidewalk robots essentially in real time. Lawmakers have to weigh the convenience of something like an autonomous sidewalk robot with the costs. Sidewalk robots could help reduce traffic congestion by getting delivery cars off the road, but then you have fleets of ‘bots crowding sidewalks. Robots could make meal delivery more affordable, but you have to make sure they are distributed in an equitable fashion. Then there are questions around liability and privacy when running robots on public streets, and more fundamental questions like where robots can recharge.

The point is, autonomous robot delivery technology is available and ready, now we just to wait and see how it will be integrated into our everyday lives.

Madison, WI Regulators Aim to Limit Robot Food Delivery

Looks like Starship’s delivery robots may be blocked from roaming the city streets of Madison, WI. The Wisconsin State Journal reports that the local Transportation Policy and Planning Board there unanimously recommended a measure yesterday that would prohibit the delivery robots everywhere in the city except for the University of Wisconsin.

Starship robots have been running around the UW campus making food and drink deliveries since November of last year. Madison’s Assistant City Attorney told The State Journal that the purpose of the proposed rule is to prevent other companies from coming in and jamming up the city’s sidewalks with robots.

The new rule wouldn’t impact the robots that are currently making deliveries to students, faculty and staff at UW. It would just bar them from expanding outside of campus. The new rule would not prevent other robot delivery companies from also operating on the UW campus.

One of the most intriguing aspects of robot delivery is watching how cities around the country have to grapple with the issue in real time. How do you balance the convenience robot delivery with equity and accessibility issues, potential losses in city revenues and liability issues? This is all new territory and cities have to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation.

In 2017, San Francisco enacted tight restrictions around robot delivery, but recently relented a bit and gave Postmates a permit to test its Serve robot in the city. Cities like Scottsdale, AZ and Houston have been popular testing grounds for autonomous vehicles. In 2018, Dallas, TX allowed robot delivery on select sidewalks. Kiwi’s robots were allowed to roam the sidewalks of Berkeley, CA. And last year Washington state passed a law allowing robot deliveries (under certain conditions) statewide.

From a business perspective, Madison’s move probably won’t have too much of an impact on Starship. The company is focusing on college and corporate campuses, and has a growing number of delivery programs running on colleges around the country.

From a city perspective, I can’t really fault Madison for this move. I think delivery robots like Starship’s are inevitable as they can run all day and night and potentially make food delivery cheaper and more accessible to everyone. But there are real issues surrounding their deployment on public streets. It’s fine to put a pause on robots to figure things out, it just shouldn’t be a full stop on the issue.

California DMV to Allow Light-Duty Self-Driving Vehicles for Tasks like Grocery Delivery

Self-driving grocery and food delivery just got one step closer to becoming a reality in California. The Golden State announced yesterday that light-duty autonomous delivery vehicles can now be tested and put to commercial use on the state’s public roads after going through the proper permitting process with the Department of Motor Vehicles (h/t The Verge).

From the press announcement:

Under revised regulations approved Monday by the Office of Administrative Law, companies with a DMV permit can operate autonomous delivery vehicles weighing less than 10,001 pounds. The DMV can begin approving new applications in 30 days. Qualifying vehicles include autonomous passenger cars, midsized pickup trucks and cargo vans carrying goods such as pizza or groceries.

You can read the full list of requirements here.

This is good news for startups like Nuro and Robomart, both of which use pod-like low-speed vehicles for delivery, are half the size of regular cars, and do not have space for a driver. Though both companies are based in California, the bulk of their public testing has occurred out of that state. Nuro in particular has done grocery delivery in Arizona and Texas in partnership with Kroger, while Robomart announced a test with ShopRite in Boston.

But the new rules are also a boon to AutoX, which operates full-sized autonomous vehicles for food delivery as well as mobile commerce. Presumably, this would also help a company like Refraction, which has three-wheeled autonomous vehicles that are smaller than Nuro’s pods but still operate on roads, if they choose to enter the California market.

Some autonomous grocery and food delivery has already been happening in California. The aforementioned AutoX has been operating in San Jose, and online grocer Farmstead has been working with self-driving van startup Udelv for grocery delivery. In those examples, though, a human driver is on-board for safety reasons.

As we’ve covered before, advancements in delivery technology, whether it be self-driving vehicles or high-flying drones, present a challenge for local and city governments. They must balance the desire to adopt new tech while maintaining the safety of its citizens as well as recouping revenues lost from traditional systems being replaced (think: parking fees lost from autonomous ride-sharing). It’s happening quickly and in the coming year we can expect a flurry of new laws across the country as states try to adapt.

Refraction Launches Robotic Lunch Delivery in Ann Arbor, MI

Given that we’ve already seen Refraction AI‘s REV-1 autonomous delivery vehicle tackle the snow covered roads of Ann Arbor, MI, it’s not really a surprise that the company announced today — in the middle of December — that it will start delivering lunches to people who don’t want to brave the cold.

Refraction will now provide food delivery for customers within a 2.5 mile zone. Local restaurants Miss Kim, Belly Deli, Tios Mexican Cafe and Chow ow Asian Street Food are participating. To sign up for the service, hungry people can fill out this form, after which they will receive instructions on how to place their order. Once done, they will receive a unique code and delivery updates. When the self-driving REV-1 arrives outside the destination, the customer is notified to meet the robot at the curb and enter the unique code to grab their food.

Normally we wouldn’t cover such a local story, but this is the first delivery partner announcement from Refraction since the company launched this past summer. Additionally, the REV-1 is different from other autonomous delivery vehicles that are starting to come to market.

The REV-1 is a three-wheeled robot sits somewhere between the bigger pod-like autonomous vehicles Nuro makes and the smaller, cooler sized robots from Starship and Kiwi. This “Goldilocks” type size means it can travel in a road’s bike lane, making it an compelling mode of delivery for both urban and suburban areas.

Plus, as noted above, the REV-1 was built to be rugged and able to travel in inclement weather. As we wrote previously:

First is the environmental scanning provided by a 12-camera setup as well as ultrasound and radar sensors on the REV-1. To make the robot less expensive, the REV-1 foregoes the LIDAR systems popular with other autonomous robots. And according to Johnson-Roberson, Refraction AI’s camera rig also allows the robot to track things not on the ground like buildings and cars to navigate even when road lines are not visible. The other way the REV-1 takes on bad weather is rather low tech. “We’re using fat bike tires a low PSI so they are squishy,” said Johnson-Roberson. “They can run in snow and rain.”

Robots are (slowly) moving from the testing phase to the market stage. Nuro just announced this week that it will be testing grocery delivery with Walmart in Houston. Postmates’ Serve is scurrying around making deliveries in Los Angeles. Starship’s robots are now roaming around multiple college campuses across the country. Kiwi announced its own reinvention last week.

Ultimately, food delivery from restaurants and grocery stores will require a number of different styles of vehicles. With its unique shape, the REV-1 looks like its ready to carve out its own (bike) lane.

Postmates’ Serve Robot Spotted (and Filmed) Making Deliveries in LA

From the looks of it, Postmates’ Serve robot is ready to roll into action, almost exactly a year after the delivery service unveiled it.

First, Serve made an appearance on The Ellen Show last week in a staged bit about delivering chips and guacamole. And almost immediately after that, Chris Reilly posted an Instagram video of Serve out in the wild making a delivery in “#Hollywood” by the “#CNNBuilding.”

It’s not exactly thrilling footage, but it does show that Serve is real and making rounds around La La Land.

In addition to being cute and cool, Serve’s apparent public debut party, as it were, is a bright spot for what has otherwise been a bummer of back half of 2019 for Postmates. The company delayed its IPO following the WeWork debacle and a general souring on third-party delivery services that have yet to prove their profitability. Then last week, Postmates shut down its Mexico City office and laid off dozens of employees across multiple offices in the U.S.

But Postmates continues to ride the robot delivery wave. Serve is just one of the delivery rover robots that have rolled into the market this year. Starship is being used by a number of colleges now, Refraction AI is proving its hardiness by making deliveries in snow covered streets, and Kiwi just announced a reinvention of its own robot that will make the device more rugged and give it the ability to retrieve items from vending machines.

Los Angeles is an interesting test case for Postmates’ delivery robots. It’s very spread out, which typically works against rover bots with their slow speed and smaller delivery range. However, Los Angeles has nice weather year round and is pretty flat (making it easier for the robot to get around), plus it has a ton of celebrities who order via Postmates.

Postmates seems to be focusing Serve’s, errr, service in California right now. The company announced it August that it was given a permit for sidewalk robotics operations from the City of San Francisco.

Kiwi Unveils New Name and a New Robot (That Can Get Food From Vending Machines!)

Words matter. That’s a lesson I hope robot delivery startup learned earlier this week when it sent out an email saying “We want to let you know that we will be ending the Kiwibot delivery service, effective December 15, 2019.“

We weren’t sure exactly what that meant, and after a full day of confusion and multiple explanatory emails from the company, it turns out it wasn’t the END end for Kiwi. It was just stopping service for the winter. (Sidenote: Don’t skimp on a copywriter.)

The company then said it would be announcing its reinvention yesterday, which it did towards the close of business with a corporate blog post. Kiwi had already shared some details from this “reinvention” earlier in the week: the company has changed its name to “Kiwibot,” there’s a new, more rugged robot on the way (see video below), and something called Kiwi Express promises to be the “First end to end robotic Food delivery service.”

Yesterday’s blog post added a few details:

In 2020, we will roll out Kiwibot Cloud Pro. A new generation is coming. Refined hardware design, new operations features, and superior human interactions will transform the logistics landscape and yield better service.

We combine sensors of a custom made stereo camera to get more information about the environment. Our Kiwibots will sense the world more accurately and move more precisely. Our Kiwibots are now resilient to dynamic light conditions on different sidewalks.

In addition to the new technology, this new Kiwibot is also more rugged, which will make it less likely to get stuck (and need a human’s help).

On Kiwibot’s website, the company says that its robots can now interact with vending machines. At first blush, this might seem like overkill to have a robot pick you up a Snickers bar from the lobby vending machine because you are too lazy to walk down there. But vending machines are changing and turning into something more akin to small restaurants. Companies like Yo-Kai Express serve hot ramen from vending machines, and Cafe X is re-classifying its coffee robot as a vending machine. So being early to integrate its robot with those types of systems now makes a lot of sense for Kiwi.

It’s nice to know that Kiwi isn’t shutting down. While there are still a lot of issues to work out, I’m still a big believer in robot delivery. More players in the space means more competition and more innovation.

Now Kiwi just needs fewer wording mistakes.