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Yandex

August 3, 2022

Some Cities Are Pushing Back on Sidewalk Robots. Here Are Some Possible Ideas For Peaceful Coexistence

While sidewalk delivery robots promise to help reduce carbon emissions and car traffic on cluttered city streets, not everyone is excited about them, including one city traffic administrator in the Yaffa municipality of Tel Aviv.

According to an article published this week in the English-language edition of Israel newspaper Haaretz, Ofir Cohen, the director of transportation, traffic and parking for Yaffa, sent a letter in early July to Israel’s Transportation Ministry to convey his belief that sidewalk robots from Russian tech company Yandex were a nuisance to pedestrians.

From the letter:

“One of the ways we give priority to pedestrians is by limiting bicycle traffic on sidewalks,” Cohen wrote. “It’s understood that the robots, which are about 80 centimeters [31 inches] wide, could be a potential real nuisance for pedestrians on the sidewalks although we have also been impressed by the [robots’] smart-navigation capabilities.”

And then, on Sunday, less than a month after Cohen sent his letter, the municipality notified the Transportation Ministry it was terminating Yandex’s pilot program.

Cohen said he believed the robots should be removed from sidewalks because they made them a much less useable public resource. He also expressed concern about the impact of robot traffic on low-mobility pedestrians as well as the elderly and children.

פלישת הרובוטים לישראל החלה: לראשונה ברחובות תל אביב, רובוט משלוחים אוטונומי. ככה זה פועל.

These are essentially the same reasons that the city council of Toronto decided to issue a ban on the use of sidewalk robots late last year. The city’s accessibility advisory committee proposed the ban, expressing concern that the robots would be hazardous to those with low mobility and impaired vision, as well as elderly people and children.

“Sidewalks are an important publicly-funded public resource, created for pedestrians to safely use,” David Lepofsky, the chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, wrote in a letter to the Council. “Their safe use should not be undermined for such things as private companies’ delivery robots.”

My guess is these rulings – which followed San Francisco’s ban on sidewalk robots in 2018 – will become more and more common as sidewalk robots go from trials to wider deployments. Because of this, it’s probably worth exploring ways to accommodate the increased use of robotic delivery vehicles and pedestrians.

One idea is simply to set limits on fleet size and traffic. In cities with lighter pedestrian traffic, having limits to ensure the sidewalks don’t become overburdened with robots makes sense.

Another is to continue to push for guidelines and safety measures for robot fleets on pedestrian walkways. Guidelines put into place during the Toronto trial included a 6 MPH speed limit, mandatory insurance for robot companies, audible signals, reflectors with lights, brakes, and a requirement that robots yield to pedestrians. I can these being expanded further and putting the legal and financial burden on robotic delivery companies to ensure pedestrians are not obstructed in any way.

Finally, I can also imagine cities exploring robot travel lanes, similar to what you might see for bikes on streets and on the sidewalks themselves. And who knows, beyond that, we might even see some of them consider sending the robots underground into tubes.

What do you think? Are there other ways you can envision pedestrians coexisting with sidewalk delivery bots? Drop us a line and let us know or let us know in the comments.

August 21, 2021

Food Tech News: Scented Water, Kabocha Squash Milk, and Robot Delivery at Ohio State

Welcome to the weekend, and the Food Tech News round-up!

Air Up uses scent to trick people into drinking more water

UK-based Air Up has developed a bottle that flavors water through scent, and tricks the brain with retronasal smelling technology. The top of the bottle has space to insert a scented pod, which is made from aromas extracted from fruits, plants, and spices. Once the bottle is filled with still or sparkling water, and the desired pod has been selected, the user sips from the silicon straw attachment on top. While drinking the water, air from the pod rises up, and the olfactory center perceives it as taste, rather than just smell.

The scented pods come in flavors like berry, kola, coffee, and cucumber, with a single pod lasting for about 5 liters of water. Air Up products are currently available in Germany, Austria, Swiss, France, Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands, and the company has plans to continue expanding throughout Europe and to the U.S.

Eat Just to launch alternative egg product in South Africa

Alternative protein company Eat Just and Infinite Foods, a market platform for plant-based food brands, announced this week they have partnered to launch JUST Egg products in South Africa. The JUST Egg Folded, made predominantly from mung beans, will be sold in a box of four in the frozen aisle. Wellness Warehouse, a grocery and wellness product retailer, will carry the product across South Africa, as well as in restaurants in Durban, Cape Town, and Johannesburg. Additionally, the alternative egg will be available on Infinite Foods’ website. According to the press release, this will be the first plant-based egg available in South Africa.

Grubhub and Yandex will offer robot delivery on the Ohio State University campus

Grubhub, a food delivery platform, and Yandex, a robot delivery service, have announced that they will be operating together on the Ohio State University. There will be 50 Yandex robots on campus that are able to deliver between the hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. A robot is able to move throughout the campus going three to five miles an hour, navigate through crosswalks, and deliver in all weather. The campus is home to 60,000 students who can order delivery from any on-campus dining establishment to any residence hall on campus, and to the Bricker Hall and Thompson Library. This is the first college campus that the Yandex robots will be operating on.

Kabochamilk launches for consumers in Asia

We can buy milk made from chia seeds, barley, oats, pistachios, and now, kabocha squash. Shane Newman, a kabocha squash farmer in Hawkes Bay, Zealand, and Sachie Nomura, a celebrity chef and the creator of avocadomilk, have collaborated to produce Kabochamilk. The company received $95,000 from the Ministry for Primary Industries in New Zealand through the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund to launch. The Kabocha Milk Company has created a shelf-stable formula that is intended for consumers in Japan, Korea, and China, where kabocha squash is a dietary staple. The alternative milk is currently available in two high-end chains, Tsurya and Harashin, in Japan.

July 6, 2021

Yandex Delivery Robots Coming to College Campuses Courtesy of Grubhub

Food delivery service Grubhub announced today that it will be bringing delivery robots to college campuses this fall thanks to a new multi-year partnership with Russian tech giant Yandex.

Yandex’s rovers are squat, cooler-sized robots that can autonomously traverse pre-mapped areas. As yet, there aren’t a ton of public details on the partnership, such as where the the robot delivery will launch or how much it will cost, but in the press announcement, Yandex said it would be deploying “dozens” of its robots for the program.

College campuses are actually a pretty great environment for last-mile delivery robots. Campuses hold large populations that eat at all hours of the day and night. They are contained geographic with ample pedestrian walkways, and they can be difficult for full-sized delivery cars and drivers to navigate. Robots and their contactless delivery can also be of use in these post-pandemic times for students packed in college dorms. Should someone living on campus get sick, they don’t need to leave their room and stand in line with other people in the cafeteria. Instead, they can ring up a robot and have food delivered, reducing their human-to-human contact.

As such, colleges are among the first places to deploy delivery robots. Starship operates at a growing number of colleges throughout the U.S., and Kiwibot is ramping up its own college food delivery programs as well. Grubhub has existing partnerships with more than 250 college campuses across the U.S., integrating student meal plans with delivery from on- and off- campus restaurants.

In addition to giving Grubhub a robotic entrée onto college campuses, this partnership also gives Yandex its first foray into the U.S. market. Yandex has been making meal deliveries around the Russian cities of Moscow and Innopolis since December of last year.

December 9, 2020

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.

November 8, 2019

Russia’s Yandex Gets Into the Delivery Bot Game

Russia-based company Yandex announced this week that it’s rolling out its own autonomous delivery robot. Dubbed the Yandex.Rover, it’s a squat, six-wheeled cooler-sized robot that can scoot around at a walking pace, delivering packages and food.

Yandex is often referred to as the Russian Google. According to the press announcement, its Rover has already hit the road at the company’s headquarters in Moscow. Similar to other delivery robots like those from Starship and Kiwi, the Yandex.Rover uses lidar and can travel autonomously (with remote supervision), recognize objects, and avoid pedestrians, animals and other obstacles.

Synergy is the name of the game for the Yandex.Rover, as it will eventually be put to use delivering meals from Yandex.Eats, groceries from Yandex.Lavka and goods from the online marketplace Beru.

At first blush, the Yandex.Rover is probably most analogous to Amazon’s Scout rover bot. Scout is currently being tested in Washington state and California for small package deliveries from Amazon. While the company hasn’t made any specific announcements, it’s not hard to imagine the Scout bot being used for food delivery from Whole Foods, Amazon Go or the eventual Amazon-branded supermarket chain.

Other autonomous delivery robots like the aforementioned Starship and Kiwi are focusing on providing food delivery to college campuses, though there is some general expansion into cities such as Sacramento.

Robots like these could drastically alter the food delivery landscape in terms of how people get their meals. Here in the U.S. at least, there are still a number of legal and infrastructure hurdles that need to be overcome before they ever become commonplace. I’m not familiar with the regulatory world of Russia, it’s hard to say if Yandex will face similar scrutiny.

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