Engineers are the new pizza delivery guys. Home delivery robots will soon be delivering your pizza straight to your door without you having to talk to a human face, your pizza might even be warmer. Multiple pizza companies are the first to be introducing robotics into their businesses. We've seen the Pepper robot assisting with purchases at Pizza Hut. However, robots delivering pizza is a whole different ballgame.
A team of engineers in Estonia, who have called themselves Starship Technologies has developed their very own pizza-delivering robots. Their prototype has sensors and a total of nine cameras built it into it. Starship believes automated robot delivery is the future of food delivery. The prototypes they have built are reportedly 90-99% automated. They will be testing 15 of their robots in London, Berlin, Tallin and Arkansas by the end of the year according to Forbes.
"This is about delivering parcels and groceries to people's doorsteps in the suburbs and this is an autonomously driving robot doing deliveries on a pavement. It's a very practical proposition actually, much more practical than doing deliveries using a self-driving car or using a drone for instance so this is actually lower cost than all those technologies," said Ahti Heinla, the man at the helm of Starship Technologies.
The Estonian team of engineers are not the only ones getting involved with robot-to-home delivery. Domino's Pizza has gotten involved as well. Domino's DLAB in Australia has revealed the Domino's Robotic Unit, or DRU, for short. Dominos' engineers were recruited from a start-up named Marathon Robotics. They acquired a robotic device formerly used by the military and began work on a pizza-delivering robot. The robot currently does 12 miles an hour. So, waiting for your pizza has just been extended based on where you live. The technology is being tested right now but we could see these pizza-delivering robots navigating our streets very soon.
Although, aren't these robots in danger of being stolen by criminals who want to harvest their parts or steal the food that is inside of them?
Heinla says he doesn't think it will come to that. In an interview with the BBC, he said: "People actually do not interfere with it on the pavement, we have driven thousands of miles with robots like this in London, Tallin, and the US and the vast majority of people just ignore it on the pavement."
