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Autonomous Robots Begin Testing For New Delivery Service

Posted by EditorDavid on from the the-robot-always-rings-twice dept.

An anonymous reader writes: "In the future, your food or package could be delivered by a coordinated fleet of self-driving vehicles," writes CBS Marketwatch, reporting on an "autonomous delivery startup" called Dispatch that's already begun pilot programs on two college campuses in California. A small droid-like vehicle "self-navigates the sidewalks at a pedestrian pace and uses cameras and LiDAR, a technology that measures distance using pulses of light, to avoid obstacles," according to site, noting that each robot in the fleet retains its data "and gets smarter with each trip." The company has already received $2 million in seed capital, and "What we're doing is we're using modern AI techniques to help the robot understand the world around it and react accordingly," one of the founders explains. "Once you imagine this it's hard to really imagine a future without it."

2 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Start planning your landing pad in your backyard. by BlueCoder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not too sure of sidewalk delivery but octocopters will be a thing. They are resilient to motor failures even while carrying a lot of weight.

    What occurs to me now that it's likely the first drone delivery will be from close by trucks that can not only deliver the package but do recovery of packages and drone rescue should problems occur. Probably launching from the roof of the truck. It's also an ideal way of delivering first class mail.

    I wonder about how we will deal with rain. Self retracting roof for the landing pad?

    What about placement? On the ground or in the air? Maybe a dumbwaiter type thing to the roof? Or put the landing pad on the roof and then retrieve everything by a personal drone?

    One thing that would be good is that eventually delivery can be done at night when your home. Or by any other programmable schedule.

  2. Re: A radical solution by DaMattster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I kind of hope political leadership never catches up and that these autonomous vehicles fail because I run my own hauling business now. I'm a one man show. I left an IT job in Corporate America to get my CDL and to begin a new career. Now I do time sensitive, less-than-truckload work and the money and freedom is wonderful. But, it's gonna suck getting replaced by a robot.