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The pandemic is bringing us closer to our robot takeout future
- gorgoiler 7y agoMilton Keynes’s Q&A on Starship is rather fun: https://www.aboutmiltonkeynes.co.uk/qa-on-mk-starship-delivery-robots/ https://www.aboutmiltonkeynes.co.uk/qa-on-mk-starship-delive... ...a welcome bit of the internet with less polish and a few corny jokes. I must admit to being a bit embarrassed at never thinking of delivery drones meaning mars rover type drones. I always assumed that “drone delivery” would mean N-copters, but little rovers seem so much more sensible at least in a city with ample modern design like Milton Keynes. (Mars rovers probably cope with cobbles ok?)
- amelius 7y agoYes but these rovers are quite slow.
- gorgoiler 7y agoI guess latency isn’t an issue when you have bandwidth / throughput to make up for it? Not for kebabs though (pleases to see that as one of the trial businesses in MK, hah!) Overnight silent electric delivery with custom delivery machines has historical precedent of course: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
- amelius 7y agoFor customers, latency matters a lot.
- Retric 7y agoBeing able to skip a delivery driver tip is a significant incentive.
- popotamonga 7y agowould they not be just vandalised?
- trebligdivad 7y agoDepends where; the subscription bicycles have worked in a lot of places; but here (Manchester) a lot ended up in the canal. Probably the same.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- amelius 7y agoMaybe these rovers have cameras that can record the vandals for later identification.
- tehlike 7y agoMaybe initially. Eventually, no. We don't destroy other people's cars for the most part.
- vageli 7y ago> Maybe initially. Eventually, no. We don't destroy other people's cars for the most part. I recall as a kid seeing so many more trucks vandalized with graffiti than nowadays.
- tehlike 7y agoPart of that is probably racism, etc is going down, it's becoming more normal to be different. Maybe?
- sharemywin 7y agoDon't they have camera's?
- maxerickson 7y agoThat's due to the mass and power budgets for a Mars rover though, not some fundamental aspect of rovers.
- tomatotomato37 7y agoTo add to that, there are electric hobby RC cars for sale with enough power to hit 70mph stock.
- sdoering 7y agoI had such a thing once. It was so much fun. A friend of mine had some others. Oh boy - what a past time.
- numpad0 7y agoI think it’s silly to scratch build rovers. Something like a motorized Renault Twizy would be a better fit.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoSurely it's more silly to drive around an empty 500 kg motorized cage for humans just to deliver <1 kg of food?
- globular-toast 7y agoIt makes a lot of sense in Milton Keynes. Unfortunately that kind of design makes it an incredibly boring place to live, but there are some benefits.
- Aaronstotle 7y agoThere was a startup in Berkeley called Kiwibots pretty much did the same thing. The concept seemed promising at first glance, yet I always thought they were too small. I feel like if they made them cooler sized, and had them go on routes like an ice cream truck it would prove to be a better business model than a bunch of tiny robots going to an fro to deliver a bag of chips.
- Jasper_ 7y agoThey faked the bots. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fans-at-UC-Berkeley-as-they-deliver-13895867.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fa... > The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes. Instead, people in Colombia, the home country of Chavez and his two co-founders, plot “waypoints” for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go. > On the ground in Berkeley, people also do a lot of robot support. Traveling at 1 to 1½ mph, the bots would take too long to chug to local restaurants, so Kiwi workers pick up the food at restaurants and take it via bikes or scooters to meeting spots around campus to insert into an insulated bag in the bots’ storage compartment. > The average distance a robot covers for a delivery is about 200 meters (656 feet, or one-eighth of a mile) which makes them fall short of a “last-mile” solution. This isn't real robot automation. It's just trying to shove the human worker out of sight, down the end of the road.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- av_engr 7y agoKiwibot isn't exactly that. Their vehicles are basically modified Traxxas RC cars and their "autonomy" is offshoring remote control work to Columbian workers for situation that the robot can't react to. Unlike Mars Rover that are designed to handle very rough and unexpected terrain, those Traxxas RC probably do not have that stability over obstacles that a mars rover have.
- nocubicles 7y agoThe robot courier company, Starship, mentioned in the article, layed off most of their employees like month ago because their business was not viable anymore. Here's the news article in Estonian, couldn't find anything in English https://www.err.ee/1069888/robotkullerite-tootja-starship-technologies-koondas-suure-osa-tootajatest https://www.err.ee/1069888/robotkullerite-tootja-starship-te...
- jkaljundi 7y agoThey temporarily laid off just the low-level operators, think of them as call centre staff or Uber drivers. These are the people who when a robot gets stuck help them cross a street or navigate around an obstacle. Think of them as support side of the business. The only reason being because US universities are on hold because of the coronavirus. The new product development, software and hardware side is still thriving.
- mb_72 7y agoHere's the English version: https://news.err.ee/1070009/starship-technologies-makes-redundancies-to-streamline-service https://news.err.ee/1070009/starship-technologies-makes-redu... I live in Tallinn, but haven't once seen a Starship bot, guess I'm in an area not covered yet (Sikupilli).
- ipsum2 7y agoThe article doesn't mention it in the first few paragraphs but these delivery robots are not autonomous, they're controlled by people, usually in a different country. Here's an article detailing Kiwi's approach. Every other delivery robot is the basically the same. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fans-at-UC-Berkeley-as-they-deliver-13895867.php?psid=8hcdb#photo-17543383 https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fa... > The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes. Instead, people in Colombia, the home country of Chavez and his two co-founders, plot “waypoints” for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go. > As with other offshoring arrangements, the labor savings are huge. The Colombia workers, who can each handle up to three robots, make less than $2 an hour, which is above the local minimum wage.
- jkaljundi 7y agoActually no, Starship is like 99% autonomous and self-driving, and just a few % of special cases are handled manually by the operators.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mattigames 7y agoHe is talking about the other company mentioned, "Kiwibot"
- icebraining 7y agoBut he also wrote "Every other delivery robot is the basically the same."
- ipsum2 7y agoDo you have a source for this? I haven't heard of any delivery company truly being 99% autonomous.
- michaelbuckbee 7y ago
- jkaljundi 7y agoRaaS - robots as a service. It's interesting to not companies like Starship do not sell their robots, but provide everything as a service.
- rwmj 7y agoThis is pretty common. Many jet engines (on airplanes) are sold as a service nowadays. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/12530 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/12530
- TeMPOraL 7y agoGive a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Rent a man a fishing rod, and you make him a slave to you forever.
- catalogia 7y agoI hope these robots know how to break a twenty. Human delivery people can, and vending machines can, so I expect that to be reasonable to implement in delivery robots. Yet for some reason, I feel pretty pessimistic about this.
- krapp 7y agoDon't worry - in the post-crash automated economy of the future no human will ever have an entire twenty dollar bill to break.
- busymom0 7y agoI feel like this whole thing will also make cash payments extinct as that requires touching dirty bills. I even think the credit machines will become tap only so you don’t have to touch dirty machines used by thousands of others and enter PIN numbers.
- djohnston 7y agoI hope cash doesn't go extinct, unless it's replaced by crypto that can guarantee anonymity like monero or whatever it was called.
- busymom0 7y agoMe too. I don't think crypto can ever be implemented correctly as long as government is involved in it. The current state of crypto isn't really anonymous since big banks are still involved.
- jotm 7y agoI don't know about the US, but there's a major push to move to electronic payments around the EU. Bank accounts are free, terminals are dirt cheap, even the poorest get contactless cards. Not to mention that cash+coin machines that can also give change have been around and reliable for a while now. But having autonomous cash-filled robots around is just inviting trouble.
- tiku 7y agoI'm just hoping for more sushi like belt restaurants..
- meitham 7y agoI would rather see my food coming directly from the kitchen to me, than seeing it orbiting around every customer breathing zone first!
- numpad0 7y agoDoesn’t make much sense to put steaming steaks on a conveyor... A lot of places use tablet menu/ordering with pictures these days. Like a supermarket grocery ad but you can tap to add to your order and send it. That with a robotic delivery could be a future.
- tiku 7y agoI saw movies of places that did this exactly, the belt does not travel across the restaurant first but directly to the table..
- Bombthecat 7y agoI work in devops (devsecops) i get more recruiter mails than before now... Talked to others in AI/ ML. They also feel like they get more mails than before... Automation definitely is now more on the radar then before.
- seemslegit 7y agoThe number of times it took me to look at the title until 'takeout' wasn't read as 'takeover'
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoSecure delivery is a must. And not to the street or even front doorstep. Who has a front doorstep? Most folks live in an apartment building. How about delivery to the balcony? To the back porch? To a secure box at the curb? To wherever the receiver marks as their delivery spot?
- Armisael16 7y ago> Most folks live in an apartment building. Source?
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoThe world. Ok in the US its 3/4 in houses and 1/4 in apartments. Its as high as 50/50 in some EU countries. Its arguable, apartment-dwellers patronize takeout more than folks with houses (and kitchens and larders and cooking equipment and storage).
- mb_72 7y agoThis is definitely the case in Tallinn, Estonia - home of Starship - yet they only seem to cover a small area of the city. I had assumed that there still always was a human following each 'bot around.
- ckdarby 7y agoDelivery to street isn't complicated and is straight forward to being secure. Drone tells you it has arrived and then in the app there's an unlock button in the app. Drone arrives & calls where you're asked to press 1. Drone arrives & SMS where replying would achieve the same. Drone arrives and connecting Bluetooth via the app would unlock. It's 2020, KISS mentality. Assumption: Why do us in software development have a tenancy to over engineer.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAssuming there's somebody there to get it, and very promptly. Imagine the drone hovering there, battery draining, holding your dripping vindaloo and you're in the bathroom or bedroom with your sweetie and in no hurry to do any of the above. Maybe secure delivery isn't hard for takeout, because usually somebody is hungry and wants it (usually). But UPS or Fedex happens when nobody's home. That's probably the better user story for secure delivery.
- Jemm 7y agoOne thing I never hear mentioned is, how are meal g to load these things? Is there going to be a lineup of them outside the restaurant to which staff must carry the product, will the drones, enter the restaurant, will there be some other way?
- lstamour 7y agoThe drone has a barcode or order number display, and like Uber Eats and friends, the restaurant has an order code. The restaurant checks the drone to see what order it expects, and either hits a button to say it’s not ready yet or loads the order in and it’s done. They could theoretically have cheap touch screen tablets in them. That said, I figure they will have human supervision for the foreseeable future, at least a decade. They would basically need to be disposable for robots to make deliveries completely unsupervised. Which in turn means you could just have a human voice on a speaker, watching the robot and interacting, or you could station such humans at the restaurants themselves, to service the bots etc. for use in a known-safe, well-mapped delivery area.
- gfxgirl 7y agoit's hard for me to imagine this ever working in the USA. People will assault the drones both "4 teh lulz" and to steal the contents and or the drone itself. A car/truck/bike usually has a person involved and for whatever reason that's usually somewhat of a deterrent (though obviously not always). But an unmanned machine that is both valuable in and of itself and is almost guaranteed to have stuff inside? I can't imagine them not being stalked in droves. Yes they can have cameras on them but the snatchers will just drive up in an unmarked van with masks on and dump them in their foil covered interior.
- gorgoiler 7y agoIntroducing them initially as being for caregivers and the vulnerable could cement the idea that they are not be messed with. Now is a good time for that kind of social engineering: put an NHS logo on them, for example, and have the robots initially doing food delivery for shielded households. In the long run: 1 in N robots could contain a dye pack, as a deterrent to robot capture and theft of contents.
- ape4 7y agoI guess pepper spray wouldn't be allowed
- globular-toast 7y agoWe have those kinds of people in the UK too, unfortunately.
- riku_iki 7y agothere are plenty of stealable electric scooters on the streets already.
- dannyw 7y agoThese robots are GPS tracked, not to mention lockable and remotely deactivable. All you looted was some plastic, useless cameras, circuit boards, and mini wheels as well as a GPS tracker. Break it open and you'll find $25 worth of food inside. How is the risk/reward worth it?
- brandall10 7y ago
- ghaff 7y agoTo the degree people really worry about the risk of going out to a restaurant to have a meal or pick up takeout, they'd probably be better off cooking at home more.
- mdgrech23 7y agodepends on the value of your time.
- Melting_Harps 7y agoI'm thinking we're at the living life vicariously through an avatar/online persona portion of that narrative, I just read that people who are suffering from loneliness have taken to Virtual dating on Animal crossing: https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/15/21220911/animal-crossing-date-tinder-dating-app-trend-coronavirus https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/15/21220911/animal-crossing-d... I think that Second Life showed it's potential, and now this has solidified it as a viable alternative to something like Tinder--which was always incredibly odd to me. Which is so weird, because I've encountered the complete opposite; now that more people have so much free time most people want to engage in way more small talk randomly with me. And despite what anyone tries to tell me, simulated dating is a waste of time to me; half of the thrill from interacting with potential partners is from the social cues and the innate responses/reactions you get from them when flirting and such. I'm unlikely to ever get that butterfly feeling from an emoji or heart icon emitted from an Animal crossing character. I've had my share of long distance relationships and even those are a strain on one's psyche an enough to warrant appreciating a maybe less appealing, but more readily tangible partner. What this has also taught me is how sad loneliness becomes, especially in old age, and the things some people will do/pay for just to escape its pitfalls. Some people's relationships in my inner circle seem like the worst of all possible outcomes to me, but the alternative of living alone when your kids are grown up and out of the house must be incredibly empty if you're divorced and away from all of them and all you had was work to keep you distracted from it all. I need to learn from their lessons for what lies ahead and apply it to my own Life. But personally, this is making me miss my analog Life even more; I want to go outdoors in Nature and go for an aimless stroll, or freely sunbathe while I surf at the beach and then go to restaurants and clubs at night and meet more new people. I just had my first experience with an online meetup, aside from the novelty of talking to people in voice with strangers rather than text on telegram chat groups, it had no real appeal to me and I'm unlikely to wake up so early for it next time. Robots are for replacing the need for Human drudgery into more time for leisure, passion projects and hobbies for us, not supplanting Life itself. So if they can do that form of 'take over' than I'm all for it and it cannot come soon enough. I just hope we have the good sense as a species to adapt to that transition with sensible infrastructure in place to support it.
- crazygringo 7y agoGiven just how much our lives in urban areas depend on package and prepared food delivery and grocery delivery, I've often wondered where the point is where vacuum-tube delivery to individual apartment buildings becomes cheaper? If the "last mile" of all deliveries for all items under, say, 1.5 feet in diameter, were handled via computer-controlled canister. (Or these days, if it weren't even by vacuum, but just electric motors buzzing down tubes.) Where your hot dinner arrives in 5 minutes rather than 25, and your Amazon Prime purchase shows up from the warehouse in 20 minutes rather than next-day. For places like Manhattan, it's just hard for me to imagine that over a decade, it wouldn't be cheaper to build and use a system like that, than to maintain our current army of tens of thousands of delivery people across restaurants, UPS, Amazon, USPS, etc.
- kovek 7y agoWhen I did Domino’s Pizza delivery, some addresses were well known, and for most addresses we did not need directions because we delivered to those neighborhoods so often. So, I see what you mean. However, I think tubes would be too much maintenance. I think low-altitude package throwing from building to building would be better. Every building would have a net and a catapult/canon on it. That would not work for cooked meals but could work for some fragile items. To prevent failures from falling on people’s heads.... I re-evaluate my idea. Have wires running from building to building, and just have a motorized package holding robot slide down those wires to the right building.
- Klinky 7y agoIt would be kind of interesting if skyscrapers were connected to each other via gondola lifts/aerial trams. However, I don't think this could be retrofitted, since likely supporting the cabling and trams was not in the original structural design of most skyscrapers.
- TenJack 7y agoI haven't done the math but my guess would be the maintenance costs would be pretty high over time and as energy costs drop, drones could be feasible.
- andrewfromx 7y agowe use doordash and grubhub all the time but the other day we noticed our local chick-fil-a offering delivery from their app. No 3rd party delivery service, just THEM. We tried it and I could not believe how fast the food arrived and was placed on our door-step (with no human delivery guy interaction). It was like 7 mins after the order all the food was there. I thought it was a joke my kid was playing on me at first with clever bags and boxes from previous orders. But nope, it was the real order!
- t-writescode 7y agoI've been hearing from my local shops, too, that they do not like DoorDash or GrubHub. Apparently it makes restaurants look bad? And I guess they skim too much off the top? I've definitely been asked to do take out or use the company's delivery service when possible. I guess Chick-Fil-A took notice of that, too. If you can, I would call the local shops you're ordering from and see if they would rather you do delivery with them, too, especially if it's a really local shop, not something a town over.
- 1123581321 7y agoNot too surprising from the company that deploys kubernetes to every local restaurant. :) https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at-chick-fil-a-scale-7b0607bd3541 https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at... Their own equipment engineering is also impressive, based on a high school classmate’s work there in Atlanta.
- gnicholas 7y ago> the most direct route, a seven minute walk, required going up a stairway and going near a construction zone. My robot instead opted to drive to the nearest main road, which almost doubled the travel distance. My first thought was: yet another reason that ramps required by the ADA are useful, beyond just serving people in wheelchairs. Universal design for the win! My second thought was: at some point, these ramps/paths will probably be overrun by delivery robots, to the extent that wheelchair users will have difficulty navigating ramps/paths that were originally built with them in mind. We'll have to make sure that delivery robots work in concert to allow humans to pass (e.g., by all moving to one side of the lane).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]