Citizens of London in the UK, Hamburg and Düsseldorf in Germany, and Bern in Switzerland will soon be able to order packages, groceries and food and have it delivered by a self-driving robot.
Starting in July, it’s a test program by robot maker Starship Technologies (co-founded by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis), an Estonian startup who has partnered with several food and package delivery companies to make the program a reality.
Unlike Amazon’s proposed drone delivery program, Starship’s robots will not be flying. Instead, they’re rolling on six wheels, using GPS, radar and camera to find their destination, navigating around obstacles and following traffic rules. They drive autonomously in a 2-3 mile radius, but they are monitored by human operators. Starship claims that in the nearly 5,000 test miles the robots have traversed, there hasn’t been a single incident.
