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Delivery Robots Can Save Jobs and Lives
Why self-driving vehicles and teleoperation are poised to thrive in a post-Covid-19 world
In the summer of 2018, I was walking near the campus of UC Berkeley when I turned a corner and came face-to-face with an irate robot.
I didn’t know it was a robot at first. It looked like a cheerful microwave oven with big, knobbly tires, sitting smack in the middle of a busy urban sidewalk. It had a tiny blue flag on the end of a whippy little pole, positioned right at eye level — presumably to get the attention of distracted pedestrians like me.
I had clearly disrupted its mission by stepping in front of it, and it wasn’t happy. Friendly digital eyes on its front morphed from a cheerful grin into a frustrated scowl as I stood there gaping and blocking its path. With some annoyed beeps, it turned its wheels, zipped around me in a surprisingly assertive way, and continued on with its day.
I would later learn that the high-strung little blue and yellow box I had encountered was a delivery robot from a startup called Kiwi. At UC Berkeley and other college campuses, Kiwi has been testing its robots as an alternative to human food delivery drivers from companies like Uber Eats and DoorDash.
