Redwood city officials recently approved of a pilot robot delivery program that will deliver groceries and food from local restaurants. The program will deliver the goods to both private homes and businesses. The robot delivery program, being launched by Starship Technologies Inc., is set to operate for at least nine months and is set to include at least 20 delivery robots. Each robot will be able to carry up to three grocery bags at a time and it will use numerous cameras on-board in order to navigate to where it needs to be.
The robot delivery machines will be able to travel roughly four miles per hour and they will mostly autonomous, aside from the fact that they will be controlled by someone whenever they need to cross any intersections in their routes. They are set to make deliveries within a five mile radius. And similar programs to this one are already well under way; operational in places like Germany and the U.K. There are also plans to unveil a similar robot delivery service in Washington, D.C.
Starship Technologies Inc. is a company with headquarters in the U.K. And in their history with providing this service, the robots have collectively served over 400,000 people and traveled tens of thousands of kilometers, but there hasn't been one single report of an accident. Starship Technologies has said that their delivery robots have come into contact with people in at least 16 different countries in roughly 56 different cities around the globe.
The delivery robots are designed to travel on public city sidewalks and they are programmed to obey crosswalk signals, as well as move out of the way when they see a pedestrian coming, and the robot itself weighs about 40 pounds. The company aims to deliver the packages to customers within 15 to 30 minutes. When the robot arrives at its destination, in order to get the package the customers are required to type in a code that will have been sent to them via the related mobile app. Once they enter that code then they will be able to open the lid and take out their order. The goal of the company is to make this delivery service one of the most cost effective options for consumers in the market, hoping to reduce the delivery cost to $1 or less.
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sources:
http://www.vocativ.com/337247/self-driving-robots-are-about-to-start-delivering-lunch/
http://postandparcel.info/76074/news/starship-technologies-marks-first-year-milestone-of-public-testing/
http://www.govtech.com/fs/Autonomous-Delivery-Robots-to-Hit-Redwood-City-Calif-Streets-in-December.html
http://kron4.com/2016/11/13/redwood-city-officials-approve-robot-delivery-pilot-program/
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2016-11-07/autonomous-bots-heading-to-redwood-city-council-to-consider-delivery-robot-pilot-program/1776425170980.html
https://www.starship.xyz/press-release/
