Self-Driving Robots Equipped with GPS Tracking to Delivery Food to London Residents
13 Oct 2016
Imagine having a pizza or Chinese food delivered to your home by a robot? Well, if you move to London, you wouldn’t have to imagine; you could actually experience it.
The future of food delivery is changing for residents of England’s capital city. Upon placing an order with an eatery, your food can be delivered by a self-driving, six-wheeled robot. Equipped with a GPS tracker, an onboard camera and sensors that are used to help navigate the city’s streets at a staggering 4 miles per hour, these self-driving robots are the wave of the future for food delivery.
When a robot reaches its destination, you, the customer, would have to type in a special code that has been sent to you by the eatery. Once you type in your code, the lid on the robot will open and you will be able to collect your food.
A total of 30 robots have traversed 5,000 miles of Greenwich, Milton Keynes and Glastonbury streets during test runs. Just Eat, a delivery food powerhouse in Europe, has announced that they will be utilizing the self-driving robots to deliver food to Londoners in the very near future.
A startup based in Estonia that was created by the co-founders of Skype, Just Eat will launch a trial with a few restaurants. The food from these restaurants will be delivered by a mini, self-driving robot. Armed with a GPS tracking device, Just Eat and the restaurants that the food is being delivered for will be able to keep tabs on the deliveries.
During the trial phase, the robots will travel up to a mile to make a food delivery. If all goes well with the trials, there is the potential to expand the delivery area to three miles.
The robots drive completely on their own, but they are monitored remotely by human operators. Each robot is equipped with nine cameras, ultrasonic sensors that offer a 360-degree field of vision, and they have a 30 cm breaking distance.
The robots have been tested in the US and Europe since the end of last year. This technology is exciting, to say the least, and opens up a wealth of possibilities for the future of sorts of delivery.
Comments are closed.