Self-driving robots, cars to deliver online orders soon?

Starship Technologies, a British-Estonian start-up established by former Skype co-founders, is testing fleets of small, CO2 emissions-free, lightweight self-driving delivery robots that can fulfil last mile deliveries within 5 to 30 minutes from a local hub or retail outlet at almost no cost at all.

Shoppers, which will first need to select a delivery slot in a special app, will be able to track the robot’s location in real-time via a mobile app. On arrival the robot will text message the app user, who will be the only authorized person to unlock the cargo. The robots were designed to navigate and drive autonomously, while being overseen by human operators. They are set to travel at the walking pace (4 mph) using pavements so unlike delivery drones they won’t need an aviation authority approval nor air traffic control service.

Most interestingly, the delivery bots are believed to cut the cost of the current last mile delivery alternatives by 10 to 15 times. “Instead of expensive and time-consuming door-to-door delivery, retailers can ship the goods in bulk to a local hub, then the robot fleet completes the delivery to the shopper’s door for a fraction of the cost. Our vision revolves around three zeroes – zero cost, zero waiting time and zero environmental impact. We want to do to local deliveries what Skype did to telecommunications,” said Ahti Heinla, CEO of Starship Technologies.

According to the company, robot deliveries also open up a range of new delivery-related opportunities, such as the point-to-point transportation of goods, or the rental and return service. Starship Technologies plans on launching the first pilot in cooperation with its partners in the US, the UK and other countries in 2016.

The long-awaited and much-hyped drone deliveries, which are severely restricted by legal and technical issues in most countries these days, making them a rather costly and long-lasting retail logistics venture, are currently being tested by such retailers as Amazon and Google, among others, and a number of logistics companies. Recently another US retail giant, Walmart, has applied for approval to test drone home deliveries of products in the country.

But a similar – if not bigger, cheaper and less legally controlled – supply chain innovation push could be generated by the development of self-driving robots. Also, in a situation where Google along with some biggest car manufacturers are conducting road tests of their driverless cars (Google vehicles are reportedly set to be launched in 2020), it seems quite likely that once in the public use, the vehicles could serve online deliveries as well.

Some local deliveries are already being manned by Uber drivers in selected US cities while Uber considers working on its own self-driving car. At the same time Amazon has recently started to use private drivers to fulfil express orders, so it is easy to imagine unmanned vehicles complementing or even taking over the delivery services at some point in the future.

“There is no doubt that self-driving vehicles will change the world of logistics. In this, as well as in many aspects of our personal and business lives, the question is no longer “if ” but rather “when” autonomous vehicles will drive onto our streets and highways,” argued DHL in a 2014 report. The company itself tested the use of driverless parcel delivery vans jointly with Volkswagen.

“Here is a glimpse into this fascinating future. An autonomous truck offloads a number of parcel-sized autonomous vehicles close to their final destination. (…) These parcel-sized autonomous vehicles could even interact with each other and intelligently determine their last-mile journeys. (…) A key question is whether the autonomous vehicle will be able to understand the environment and react appropriately?,” reads the DHL report.