Serve Robotics, a former division specializing in autonomous delivery of Uber from which it separated in 2022, will deploy its robots in several American cities to precisely deliver meals ordered on Uber Eats.
The two companies are already in partnership in Los Angeles, where a hundred robots make deliveries for more than 200 restaurants participating in the program. Given the success of this collaboration, they decided to move up a gear.
More than 2,000 robots in several American cities
Indeed, in Los Angeles but also in San Francisco, the city where Serve Robotics is based, autonomous robots have “ made tens of thousands of contactless deliveries since its creation in 2017. Now, the firm is extending its partnership with Uber Eats to deploy 2,000 of its robots in several American markets.
Serve Robotics, in which NVIDIA has invested $10 million, is currently working with industry partners and city officials for this next step, with cities including San Jose, Vancouver and Dallas as potential targets.
The firm says its four-wheeled robots are capable of operating for an entire day on a single charge, transporting up to 23 kilograms of goods at a maximum speed of 11 km/h. The compartment of the machine in which the products are placed can only be unlocked by the client company or the person who placed the order, using an app.
Serve Robotics’ devices have Level 4 autonomy, so they can handle all aspects of driving in certain conditions without human intervention. Nevertheless, an operator intervenes when the robots run into obstacles such as areas secured by the police or works, which can sometimes lead to funny situations.
Autonomous delivery is on its way
This announcement proves that Uber is banking on autonomous delivery for its future. In addition to Serve Robotics, the American giant recently announced that self-driving vehicles from Alphabet subsidiary Waymo will be available for transport and delivery on the Uber platform in Phoenix later this year. Uber is also working with Motional to deliver food in Santa Monica with the company’s self-driving Hyundai IONIQ 5s.
More and more companies are deploying delivery robots, like Kiwibot, but for the moment it is mainly a phenomenon being tested across the Atlantic. To see little robots treading the European sidewalks, we will surely have to wait a long time.
Source : TechCrunch
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