Uber to test delivering food with robots
Starting Monday Uber Eats customers will be given the option to have their meals delivered by one of the robots, rather than a traditional human delivery. Customers will receive instructions in the Uber app for how to retrieve their food from inside the robot. The Serve robots resembles a colorful cooler on wheels, with a lid that flips open to reveal a delivery inside. The robot, which will operate in West Hollywood, has headlights that resemble eyes, making it look like something out of a cartoon.
Orders delivered via the Hyundai sedan will be stored in a thermal container in the back seat, where the customer will retrieve them. Motional will have a human test driver behind the wheel as a safety precaution. Serve Robotics, which operates Uber’s sidewalk robots, will rely on a remote human operator to supervise deliveries.
Uber’s robot deliveries will account for “a very, very small number of our deliveries” in the near future, according to Noah Zych, who leads autonomous mobility and delivery at the company.
“This is the first chapter of motor vehicles doing delivery on Uber,” Zych said. “We see the potential in the future but have to start where we are today.”
But Uber’s adjusted EBITDA, a profitability metric, is worse for food delivery than ridehailing, which may suggest robots could improve its profitability. Businesses generally like to automate tasks because it can reduce labor costs and improve profit margins.
Companies have long talked about using robots to deliver things to people, but pilot programs so far have been small and typical of the autonomous delivery world that’s long had more sizzle than substance amid technical and regulatory challenges. Companies like Domino’s, Kroger and Amazon have all dabbled in robot delivery in recent years.
Amazon has a sidewalk robot delivery service of its own, called Scout. Public tests began in 2019, and Amazon says it’s delivered tens of thousands of packages in Snohomish County, Washington; Irvine, California; Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee.
They’re a tiny fraction of Amazon’s total deliveries, which amount to billions of packages a year.
Starship, a sidewalk robot company, says it is making 10,000 deliveries a day in 40 locations worldwide, including 25 US college campuses. Its deliveries, which cost an average of $1.99, tripled in 2021, company spokesperson Janel Steinberg told CNN Business.
Starship claims to be profitable in some of its locations, but didn’t say where. CNN Business has not audited its financials to confirm the claim.
George Mason University, one location that Starship has operated at since 2019, says that about 60 robots deliver between 700 to 1,000 deliveries per day from locations like Panera Bread, Starbucks and Blaze Pizza.
Deliveries cost $2.49, plus a 10% service fee, according to university spokesperson Sofya Vetrova. Community feedback has been 95% positive, Vetrova said.
One of the largest players in robot delivery is Google’s parent company Alphabet. Alphabet’s drone delivery company, Wing, says it made 53,000 commercial deliveries in the first three months of this year, a 355% increase from the same period in 2021. Wing operates in Logan and Canberra Australia; Christiansburg, Virginia; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and Helsinki, Finland.
Wing spokesperson Scott Coriell told CNN Business that regulations are holding back its technology in the US, and says it’s had more scale and impact in Australia because of the different regulatory environment. The company, like many others, declined to say when it expects robot deliveries to be mainstream in the United States.
“It’s the trillion-dollar question,” said Dave Ferguson, co-founder of the autonomous robot startup Nuro, which is testing delivery with Kroger and 7-Eleven.
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