A delivery robot is an autonomous robot that provides "last mile" delivery services. An operator may monitor and take control of the robot remotely in certain situations that the robot cannot resolve by itself such as when it is stuck in an obstacle. Delivery robots can be used in different settings such as food delivery, package delivery, hospital delivery, and room service. [1] [2]
Deployments of food delivery robots were in a small scale prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. [3] By January 2019, there were some deployments on United States college campuses. George Mason University became the first university campus that incorporated on-demand food deliveries by robots as part of its meal plan with 25 robot fleet from Starship Technologies. [4] As the pandemic continued on, demands for food deliveries had increased significantly. This caused the demands for food delivery robots in college campuses to surge as well. [3] Starship and other companies such as Kiwibot deployed hundreds of food delivery robots to several college campuses and some city streets in the United States and United Kingdom. Food delivery service companies also added delivery robots to their platform. For example, Grubhub partnered with Yandex to provide services in colleges, while Uber Eats partnered with Serve Robotics, Motional, Cartken, and Avride for robot food delivery in various cities in the United States. [5] [6] Also, Yandex uses self-development Yandex Rover delivery robots for its delivery service «Yandex Eats» and «Yandex Shop » (Russian:Яндекс Лавка, romanized:Yandeks Lavka) in a number of Russian cities since 2019. [7] Limitations of using food delivery robots includes inability to accommodate special delivery requests such as leaving the food at the door, and inability to navigate difficult terrains. This may require remote operators to help the robots to navigate around obstacles. [3]
In April 2018, Starship Technologies launched its groceries delivery service in Milton Keynes, England, in partnership with supermarket chains Co-op and Tesco. [8] By November 2020, said Starship Technologies, Milton Keynes had the "world's largest autonomous robot fleet". [9]
Early 2022 saw the opening of Nourish + Bloom, the first African American-owned autonomous grocery store in the world. The new store processes transactions using computer vision equipment in tandem with artificial intelligence-based voice and gesture technology. Nourish + Bloom offers delivery service using robotic vehicles supplied by Daxbot. [10] That startup, which is based in Philomath, Oregon, and raising investments through a crowdfunding campaign, has developed a unit that can travel up to 10 miles at 4 mph and has a temperature-controlled cargo space. [11]
In January 2019, Amazon launched an experimental service to deliver small packages to their Amazon Prime customers using delivery robots called Amazon Scout. The test was done in Seattle region and expanded to Irvine California, Atlanta, and Franklin in Tennessee. [12] In 2021, after testing of package delivery robots had been done in 4 U.S. cities, Amazon created a new development center in Finland to make further advancement in the technology in order for their robots to better handle real-life navigations. [13]
Delivery robots can perform several tasks in hospital settings to reduce operational costs. The first set of tasks are for food, medical specimens, and medicine deliveries. With multiple sensors, the delivery robots can navigate the interior layout of the hospitals. They also have an electronic signal that can request an elevator ride to be able to work in multi-story buildings. With security concerns, some delivery robots are equipped with code and a biometric fingerprint scan to prevent unauthorized access to the contents inside the robots. As of 2019 [update] there were more than 150 hospitals in the United States and elsewhere that deployed the delivery robots. The second set of tasks is to deliver soiled linen carts and medical waste. These requires heavy duty delivery robots as the weights to carry could be in several hundred pounds (several hundred kilograms). [14] [15]
In Israel, Sheba Medical Center uses delivery robots to shuttle chemotherapy drugs prepared by the pharmacy department directly to the nurses to cut down the waiting time. [16]
In late 2014, a room service robot named Relay was introduced by a robotics startup company, Savioke. When hotel staff received an order from a guest, the staff would put items inside Relay and the robot would deliver items to the guest room. By 2016, fleets of Relay robots were deployed at five major hotel chains. [17] In August 2017, M Social hotel in Singapore introduced room service robots named AURA to assist staff in tasks such as delivering bottled water and towels to guest rooms. It was the first such service outside of the United States. [18]
A number of companies are actively using small robots to do the last-mile delivery of small packages such as food and groceries just using the pedestrian areas of the road and travelling at speed comparable with a fast walking pace, companies actively delivering include:
Being autonomous, the delivery robots primarily interact with the general public without the assistance of a human operator, in both positive and negative encounters. [21] The delivery robot manufacturer Starship Technologies has reported that people kick their robots. [21] However, the vast majority of human interactions are positive, and many people have anthropomorphized the robots due to their appearance. [22] This has led to encounters where people feel a sense of caring towards the robots, assisting the robots when they are stuck, worrying for the robots on their journeys, or praising or thanking robots for their delivery service. [22]
Milton Keynes City Council is the local authority for the City of Milton Keynes, a local government district in Buckinghamshire, England. The council was established in 1974 as Milton Keynes Borough Council. Since 1997 it has been a unitary authority, being a district council which also performs the functions of a county council; it is independent of Buckinghamshire Council, the unitary authority which administers the rest of the county.
Co-op is a UK supermarket chain and the brand used for the food retail business of The Co-operative Group, one of the world’s largest consumer co-operatives. As the UK’s fifth largest food retailer, Co-op operates nearly 2,400 food stores. It also supplies products to over 6,000 other stores, including those run by independent co-operative societies, through its wholesale business, Nisa Retail Limited.
An online grocer is a supermarket or grocery store that allows ordering via websites or mobile apps. The order can either be collected by the customer or delivered to the customer by drivers engaged by the grocer, a food delivery service, or by delivery drones and robots.
Amazon Fresh is a subsidiary of the American e-commerce company Amazon in Seattle, Washington. It is a grocery retailer with physical stores and delivery services in some U.S. cities, as well as some international cities, such as Berlin, Hamburg, London, Milan, Munich, Rome, and some other locations in Singapore and India.
Yandex Search is a search engine owned by the company Yandex, based in Russia. In January 2015, Yandex Search generated 51.2% of all of the search traffic in Russia according to LiveInternet.
Starship Technologies, Inc. is an Estonian company developing autonomous delivery vehicles. Founded in 2014, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with engineering operations in Tallinn, Estonia, and Helsinki, Finland. Starship also has offices in London and Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom and in Hamburg, Germany.
Yandex Taxi, a division of Yandex, operates a ridesharing company in Russia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and UAE. The Yandex Taxi division also operates Yandex Eda, a food delivery service; Yandex.Lavka, a grocery delivery service; and Yandex.Chef, previously known as Partiya Edy, a meal kit service. All services are accessible via the Yandex Go mobile app.
Zen is a personal recommender system that uses machine learning technology.
Yandex Market is a Russian free online service for the selection of goods and shopping. The service was launched on November 30, 2000 by Yandex. Since 2016, it is a separate company.
Kar-go, is an autonomous delivery vehicle, designed and built by British company, Academy of Robotics Ltd, a UK company, registered in Wales. The vehicle uses self-drive / driverless car technology to drive itself to locations where it delivers packages autonomously.
Yandex.Drive is a Russian carsharing service owned by Yandex. The service offers short-term car rentals in Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Saint-Petersburg, Kazan and Sochi launched in February 2018.
Nuro, Inc. is an American robotics company based in Mountain View, California. Founded by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, Nuro develops autonomous delivery vehicles and is the first company to receive an autonomous exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Robomart is an American technology company headquartered in Santa Monica, California that builds autonomous smart shops for cafes, ice cream parlors, and quick-service restaurants. The company’s white label platform gives retailers the option to expand their footprint at a significantly lower cost than traditional brick-and-mortar real-estate.
Yandex Self-Driving Group is a developer of self-driving cars and delivery robots. It is headquartered in Moscow, Russia. Yandex Self-Driving Group is a part of the Russian company Yandex LLC.
Yandex Eats, a part of Yandex Taxi, which is in turn a division of Yandex, operates a food delivery service. It is accessible via the Yandex Go mobile app.
Samokat is a Russian dark store rapid delivery service for food and household goods. Founded in 2017, it was the first dark store operator in the country. By 2022, Samokat owned around 1,100 dark stores in 49 cities and handled 35% of dark store deliveries Russia-wide.
Academy of Robotics is a UK-based artificial intelligence technology company that creates technology to automate repetitive tasks and logistics.
Rodion Shishkov is a Russian-born Israeli-British tech entrepreneur, the founder of Samokat and Buyk dark store rapid delivery services. His company TRA Robotics designs and builds highly automated microfactories, including the production facilities for the British unmanned commercial electric vehicle manufacturer Arrival. He's also a former Yota and Russian Post executive responsible for developing and delivering new digital services.
Slava Bocharov is a retail executive and entrepreneur, former deputy CEO of Magnit, the creator of Magnit Cosmetics branch. The founder of Samokat and Byuk dark store rapid delivery services.
Avride is a developer of autonomous driving technology, specializing in autonomous cars and delivery robots. The company is headquartered in Austin, TX, and has additional offices in Tel Aviv, Israel; Belgrade, Serbia and Seoul, South Korea.
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