“STOP, in the name of love!” a man sings at the machine, palm outstretched, jumping back in mock alarm. “What the hell is that?”
It is a self-driving delivery robot, and it is also a conversation starter – a unit of rounded plastic about the size of a mini-fridge, sending ripples through the streets near Borough station, where Starship Technologies has its business headquarters. The company operates a small fleet of 10-15 robots, delivering mostly takeaway food orders, and increasingly parcels, over distances of up to two miles.
Delivery robots: a revolutionary step or sidewalk-clogging nightmare?
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The fact the machines still turn heads – and must be accompanied on journeys by handlers, as agreed by Starship with Southwark borough council – suggests the future of fully autonomous delivery is not yet here. But it is on its way, and faster than the robots’ top speed of 4mph might suggest.
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With politicians and the public more wary of self-driving cars than ever following the first pedestrian fatality last month, and drone activity severely regulated, ground robots delivering small goods seem a comparatively straightforward proposition. As online shopping booms, consultants McKinsey & Co predicted in 2016 that within a decade 80% of all items would be delivered autonomously.
But with robots the future of “last-mile logistics”, there is fierce competition to be the company at the front of the pack.
There is Nuro, an autonomous vehicle promising to “run your errands for you”, for which two former principal engineers of Google’s self-driving car project received $92m (£64.6m) in funding. There is the fully electric, self-driving “e-Palette” unveiled by Toyota and Pizza Hut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and Gita, Piaggio Fast Forward’s “cargo droid … big enough to carry a case of wine”.
And then there are the companies already out on the streets, among them Starship and its competitor Marble, which announced a further $10m (£7.2m) in funding last week.
A Nuro an autonomous vehicle that promises to run your errands for you.
The Nuro – an autonomous vehicle that promises to run errands for you. Photograph: Courtesy: Nuro
Starship’s London operation is modest compared with that in many US cities, the Estonian capital of Tallinn (home of the company’s co-founder, Ahti Heinla, a founding engineer of Skype), and especially Milton Keynes, which is attempting to establish itself as a tech hub. There, Starship robots are free to operate without handlers – or “ambassadors”, as spokesman Henry Harris-Burland calls them.