While robots were being tested in limited numbers before the coronavirus hit, the companies building them say pandemic-related labor shortages and a growing preference for contactless delivery have accelerated their deployment.
Hundreds of little robots — knee-high and able to hold around four large pizzas — are now navigating college campuses and even some city sidewalks in the U.S., the U.K.
They’re also operating on sidewalks in Milton Keynes, England; Modesto, California; and the company’s hometown of Tallin, Estonia.
But generally, they use cameras, sensors, GPS and sometimes laser scanners to navigate sidewalks and even cross streets autonomously.
Remote operators keep tabs on multiple robots at a time but they say they rarely need to hit the brakes or steer around an obstacle.
And some big cities with crowded sidewalks, like New York, Beijing and San Francisco, aren’t welcoming them.
Ray said there have been few reports of problems with the robots, other than an occasional gaggle of kids who surround one and try to confuse it.
Grubhub recently partnered with Russian robot maker Yandex to deploy 50 robots on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Ji Hye Kim, chef and managing partner of the Ann Arbor, Michigan, restaurant Miss Kim, relied heavily on robot delivery when her dining room was closed last year.
Kim prefers robots to third-party delivery companies like DoorDash, which charge significantly more and sometimes cancel orders if they didn’t have enough drivers.
Delivery demand has dropped off since her dining room reopened, but robots still deliver around 10 orders per day.
While Kim managed to hang on to her staff throughout the pandemic, other restaurants are struggling to find workers.
Domino’s is partnering with Nuro, a California startup whose 6-foot-tall self-driving pods go at a maximum speed of 25 mph on streets, not sidewalks.
Maloney said it’s not a question of if, but of when, robots will start doing more deliveries.
For cheaper sidewalk robots — which cost an estimated $5,000 or less — it’s even easier to undercut human delivery costs.
Since then, it has hired more than 30 people to serve as runners between kitchens and robots, Bowling Green dining spokesman Jon Zachrich said.
Brendan Witcher, a technology analyst with the consulting firm Forrester, says it’s easy to get excited about the Jetsons-like possibility of robot delivery.