Delivery Bots

Delivery Bots

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Delivery Bots

Starship technologies is a robot firm that was founded by Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, who are co-founders of Skype. With their invention they would like to solve the cost aspect of the very last short leg of deliveries, the delivery from the HUB to your door.

Normally deliveries take on a large scale from Hub to Hub, with large volumes being transported. The last leg to your door, could be small volumes, as little as one item per delivery. For this last leg you often need flexibility to fit in with your customers needs and time schedules. This leg can be very expensive when costing is done per km. Further issues with the last leg is that it often take place in city centers, which go hand in hand with traffic jams and parking problems.

One solution to this problem is delivery drones, but this has a number of regulatory obstacles to overcome. You can look at a light hearted post on a Beer Delivery Drone at the following link Beer Derivery Drone

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Starship Technologies came up with the idea of a self driving delivery bot.
These bots travel at a speed of approximately 6.5km/h, which is equivalent to a fast walking pace. It is thus slow enough to be safe for pedestrians it may encounter en-route. It also has built in detectors to avoid collisions. It also has a video camera that enables human controllers to view the environment when they need to take over control of the bot in an emergency. It has 9 cameras and GPS to help navigate the bot. The human controller can also interact with people though a built in microphone and speakers.

ET Phoning Home??

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The bot has the capacity to carry 2 grocery bags in its belly. The cameras and GPS is also a theft deterrent, as your face will be broadcasted to the control center and the GPS will be able to track your whereabouts.

A app on your phone will be used to open the lid of the bot to grant you access to your merchandise.

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With it's 6 wheels the bot is also able to traverse rough terrain and is capable to climb pavements!!

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This invention will definitely lower the cost of transport. What do you think is this a workable solution for the last leg of deliveries? Or do you think delivery drones is a better idea?

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the post