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Will Zero-Emission Zones Drive Robotic Delivery Adoption? Looks Like It.

by Michael Wolf
September 7, 2021September 7, 2021Filed under:
  • Robotics, AI & Data
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Last February, Santa Monica passed a rule that said all deliveries within it need to have zero emissions. Basically, this means that food needs to be delivered by someone on a bike, in an electric vehicle or…a robot.

It looks like the robots may be winning.

According to this dot.LA piece, delivery bots from a few different companies are now buzzing around the sidewalks, one of them being the Santa Monica-based Coco.

Launched in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has expanded operations from one Santa Monica neighborhood to six other neighborhoods in little over a year. In February, the company rolled out their robots in San Pedro, working with Councilman and mayoral hopeful Joe Busciano and the Chamber of Commerce. Several local restaurants including San Pedro Brewing Co. and Whale & Ale signed on.

California often leads when it comes to regulations, and Santa Monica’s new zero-emission zone is the country’s first. I suspect that we’ll probably see other California cities follow suit and, if they do, I expect we’ll see more sidewalk robots shuttling meals to customers soon after.

Could other cities outside of California follow suit? I think they will, especially as cities become increasingly crowded with traffic from customers ordering food.

For now, though, we’ll keep an eye on how many more robots pop on the sunny sidewalks of Santa Monica.


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Refraction AI Raises $4.2M for its Three-Wheeled Robot Delivery

Robot delivery company Refraction AI announced today that it has raised $4.2 million in new seed funding. The round was led by Pillar VC, with participation from eLab Ventures, Osage Venture Partners, Trucks Venture Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Chad Laurans (founder of SimpliSafe), Invest Michigan, and others. Based in Ann…

Kiwibot Launches V4.0 of its Delivery Robot, Partners with Knight Foundation, Chick-fil-A and Segway

Robot delivery startup Kiwibot is holding an online keynote this morning to announce the newest version of its semi-autonomous rover bot, as well as new partnerships with the Knight Foundation, Chick-fil-A and Segway. We'll be attending the virtual conference and will fill in more details aftewards, but here is what…

Uber Eats and Motional to Provide Driverless Food Delivery in 2022

Food delivery platform Uber Eats and driverless technology company Motional announced last week that they are partnering to pilot autonomous food deliveries. The companies plan to launch this service in Santa Monica, California, in early 2022. The delivery vehicle provided and operated by Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai Motor…

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