Home » Where are we with robots making deliveries instead of Amazon’s couriers?

Where are we with robots making deliveries instead of Amazon’s couriers?

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In “Crocodile”, the third episode of the fourth season of “Black Mirror” (and this), the beautiful science fiction series on Netflix, a self-driving vehicle hits a person while he is delivering some pizzas. He does it alone, with no humans on board. And in the real world? We are not yet at this point here, but this is more or less the path we have begun to take.

Nuro, a start-up from Mountain View, California (yes, the same city where Google is based) has been authorized by the federal government to use about 5 thousand r in American citiesobot R2 for deliveries: they are relatively small and compact, they are electrically powered and have a rather large load compartment to hold the packages they have to deliver. At the same time, Ford and Volkswagen have invested over $ 3.5 billion in Argo, a Pittsburgh start-up which develops systems for autonomous driving, whose concrete application could be seen with the arrival on the market of the Buzz (or Id.Buzz), a modern version of the historic Bulli minibus.

And Amazon? Jeff Bezos’ company, recently at the center of controversy for working conditions of its employees and (human) couriers has for some time been experimenting with Scout robots for delivery: in the US they can be seen in many cities, from Atlanta to Irvine (California), from Tennessee to Texas, to Washington State. As explained on Twitter (below) by those who have tried and sighted them, at the time of the order you are advised of the possibility of having it delivered by a robot, you choose a time and for half an hour the robot will be at the established point; when you are notified of its presence, you approach it, open the upper door and take your package. And he also greets Scout, if desired.

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At the moment, as can also be seen from some images shared on social networks, these little robots do not work alone: ​​they are loaded on a van and taken to the neighborhood where deliveries are made by human colleagues, who activate them and even follow them from a distance. and they check that everything goes well and there are no problems.

The (economic) risks of the trade
In short, it is not long until we see our streets invaded by robots or small autonomous vehicles that will deliver everything we order online or even driverless trucks that will take the goods from one part of the world to another. Or it’s missing a lot.

The problem, more than the technology, seems to be money: developing these vehicles, taking care of the tests, managing those that do not go well and above all setting up the necessary infrastructures, costs a lot. In announcing its upcoming listing on the stock exchange, the American start-up TuSimple, which is precisely setting up a fleet of self-driving trucks for the southern part of the United States (broadly, from Arizona to Florida), admitted to have lost about $ 300 million in the past 3 years.

This is despite the fact that TuSimple is one of the strongest companies in the industry: it was founded in 2015, has a valuation of around 1 billion dollars, 800 employees and has received millions of dollars in funding from investors who believe it can do it. As long as it doesn’t end up overwhelmed by debt, of course.

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Or even surpassed by Tesla, given that Elon Musk’s company is focusing heavily on Semi, its self-driving truck that should bring the technologies that so much success they are having on private cars: The company recently signed an agreement with Pepsi to supply 15 of these road giants, to be used in place of the more polluting and less efficient diesel trucks for the delivery of goods. If there will be people or other machines to download them, we still do not know … but perhaps we can imagine a little.

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