Autonomous Robots Begin Testing For New Delivery Service

An anonymous reader writes: "In the future, your food or package could be delivered by a coordinated fleet of self-driving vehicles," writes CBS Marketwatch, reporting on an "autonomous delivery startup" called Dispatch that's already begun pilot programs on two college campuses in California. A small droid-like vehicle "self-navigates the sidewalks at a pedestrian pace and uses cameras and LiDAR, a technology that measures distance using pulses of light, to avoid obstacles," according to site, noting that each robot in the fleet retains its data "and gets smarter with each trip." The company has already received $2 million in seed capital, and "What we're doing is we're using modern AI techniques to help the robot understand the world around it and react accordingly," one of the founders explains. "Once you imagine this it's hard to really imagine a future without it."

Not likely

[fyngyrz]

It will be hilarious watching idiots trying to break into a secure internal compartment in order to make off with a plate of noodles, or a $19.95 payment for same on the return trip to the vehicle.

Do you really think no one would consider security?

Please.

Re:

[sittingnut]

if delivery is to ordinary people, ease of accessing goods delivered will triumph over security.
and as far as i know, only part of reward of any stealing/hacking reside in value of the things stolen.

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[ShanghaiBill]

if delivery is to ordinary people, ease of accessing goods delivered will triumph over security.

That is true for human-delivered goods as well. UPS and FedEx just toss packages on my front porch. USPS leaves packages in my unlocked mailbox. Yet I have never had a package stolen. How will these robots be any less secure than the current system?

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[mrclevesque]

robbing off you private front porch and robbing a non-human contraption on public property is quite a different affair

Remember the fate of Hitchbot in Philadelphia?

[ffkom]

Hitchbot didn't even contain anything valuable, and still was vandalized quickly once travelling on US soil: http://www.people.com/article/... [people.com] And the vandalism being taped on video didn't mean anyone bothered to catch the bad guy.

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[fabioalcor]

Well, looks like they're really not considering security.
Not only the stuff inside the bot are valuable to thieves, the own bot can be as well, since it can be dismantled for the parts (i.e. batteries).
Never underestimate robbers.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

That's ridiculous. Daleks don't have arms.

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[postbigbang]

But dogs have teeth. Imagine an untamed Rott challenging a delivery unit on a sidewalk. Or more harmful still: a four year old with a squirt gun.

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[fyngyrz]

Well, just imagine the surprise of a customer on the other side of town when the robot opens its package bay and "delivers" the four year old. :)

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

It will be hilarious watching idiots trying to break into a secure internal compartment

...on camera. Passed in real time to the cops, including the exact position.

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[fyngyrz]

You could just take the whole machine too.

...which is busily reporting its position and direction of movement.

Seriously, It's a non-starter. This isn't the 1940's. We're not talking about Robby the robot. The very technologies that make this possible -- cameras, GPS, compasses, RF communications, secure recordings, encryption, power locks -- all serve to impede criminal activity on multiple fronts at once.

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[fyngyrz]

You assume the only cameras will be on the robot. Not exactly a safe assumption. Even now.

Sorry. The days of romping and stomping all over everything and being unidentifiable are over.

Every day there are more cameras, more camera platforms, higher recording resolutions, more storage.

Welcome to the real world. Orwell was an optimist. [fyngyrz.com]

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

It will be hilarious watching idiots trying to break into a secure internal compartment in order to make off with a plate of noodles, or a $19.95 payment for same on the return trip to the vehicle.

Do you really think no one would consider security?

Please.

A ton of youtube videos tells me that messing with these small droid like vehicles will become a new sport.

In a world where people are happy to be tied to a tree and have their frieinds shoot paintballs at them, or think launching a bottle rocket from their backside is the shitz, this will happen.

And that's just the jokers. The paranoid will probably take a second amendment solution, cuz the vehicle is "probably there to spy" on them.

Slashdotters will probably steal them for a parts source for that 3-

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[PPH]

Problem solved [americannewsx.com]

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[ffkom]

Indeed, deliveries have never been robbed from "moving things" that cannot fight back, run away, or at least stand up again after being tipped over.

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[ffkom]

Even more probable than facing robbery is that outside of enclosed hysterical-cry-baby-safe-space-campuses, such delivery drones will face vandalism. Any bad mooded teenager can take such a drone out by a simple kick. And unlike delivery boys, which might kick back or at least stand up again, the drone will just lay there on its side until somebody comes to pick it up.

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[Ol Olsoc]

Or perhaps not a troubled teen but a curious one. Kick it onto a little red wagon and wheel it to a secure place. Motors, controllers, sensors, batteries ,belts, gears and other stuff. It's a goldmine.

I had to chuckle when I read this. As a kid I tore everything apart to see how it worked. I fear the temptation on a teenage me would have been too much to resist

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[ShanghaiBill]

Any bad mooded teenager can take such a drone out by a simple kick.

... and would be caught on camera doing so. It would be much simpler and safer for the teenager to just vandalize parked cars.

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[PPH]

... and would be caught on camera doing so.

Doesn't seem to slow the front porch package thieves down.

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[gweihir]

And the robot being stolen in addition (otherwise it will probably not pay enough). Also expect them to be kicked, put into dumpsters, set on fire, hit with a baseball-bat, thrown into lakes and rivers, etc. Will be interesting to see whether they have a chance long-term or whether plain human stupidity and hunger to feel superior (even if only to a robot) will prevail. Personally, I would like them being successful, in particular on-demand package delivery would be really nice, but we will see.

It Never Rains In Southern California.

[westlake]

They always seem to test these things in desert-dry, pool-table flat environments, where automated delivery seems least urgent or necessary. The bike and pedestrian paths are there, after all, to see that students get a little exercise on campus.

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[eric_harris_76]

Time to re-read _Snow Crash_, speaking of delivery of small items.

Real world

[fnj]

How does it do with piles of snow and ice on the sidewalk? Hmmm?

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[RespekMyAthorati]

Or bot thieves? Or angry laid-off workers?

A radical solution

[Max_W]

Such an approach is built around a medieval model of a city. This vehicle 95% carries its own weight.

What is needed, however, is the implementation of the Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies, or ET3: http://www.et3.com/ [et3.com] . This technology is ecological, safe, scalable, and fast.

The main obstacle is the littleness of the current political and technical leadership, which is stuck firmly in the past centuries.

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[ickleberry]

Yep and it doesn't require batteries or fancy schmancy AI based navigation tricks

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[ShanghaiBill]

Yep and it doesn't require batteries or fancy schmancy AI based navigation tricks

Exactly. Whey use a $20 battery and zero-marginal cost software, when you can simply use a pneumatic system that requires billions of dollars of subterranean infrastructure that doesn't exist.

Re: A radical solution

[DaMattster]

I kind of hope political leadership never catches up and that these autonomous vehicles fail because I run my own hauling business now. I'm a one man show. I left an IT job in Corporate America to get my CDL and to begin a new career. Now I do time sensitive, less-than-truckload work and the money and freedom is wonderful. But, it's gonna suck getting replaced by a robot.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

A great idea but it won't deliver your pizza. That is, not unless you'll have a tube stop in your basement.

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[gweihir]

Hahahahahaha, in an age where infrastructure is in steady decline, you expect billions to be invested in new infrastructure?

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[Gussington]

Hahahahahaha, in an age where infrastructure is in steady decline,

What?
Infrastructure is not in decline, maybe in your street or suburbs, but globally it is off the charts. eg There's over 2000 airport construction projects going on right now. And that's just airports...

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[westlake]

What is needed, however, is the implementation of the Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies, or ET3.
. The main obstacle is the littleness of the current political and technical leadership, which is stuck firmly in the past centuries.

The first pneumatic tube delivery systems went into service in the 1860s --- but parcel delivery is essentially a "last mile" problem and that is where things start to get expensive. ET3 is irrelevant in this context.

Start planning your landing pad in your backyard.

[BlueCoder]

I'm not too sure of sidewalk delivery but octocopters will be a thing. They are resilient to motor failures even while carrying a lot of weight.

What occurs to me now that it's likely the first drone delivery will be from close by trucks that can not only deliver the package but do recovery of packages and drone rescue should problems occur. Probably launching from the roof of the truck. It's also an ideal way of delivering first class mail.

I wonder about how we will deal with rain. Self retracting roof for the landing pad?

What about placement? On the ground or in the air? Maybe a dumbwaiter type thing to the roof? Or put the landing pad on the roof and then retrieve everything by a personal drone?

One thing that would be good is that eventually delivery can be done at night when your home. Or by any other programmable schedule.

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[drolli]

I'm not too sure of sidewalk delivery but octocopters will be a thing. They are resilient to motor failures even while carrying a lot of weight.

No they wont. Sidewalk delivery is safe, energy efficient, and a drone can not easily lift a few hundred kg and still be allowed to fly over peoples heads.

Here's the drone service I want:

[EmperorOfCanada]

I want to sit in a park, at work, at home, or wherever. I want to order something like a burger, a donair (look it up) or a coffee. I then want to step outside and have it arrive a very short while later. Once I can do this, then I can't see not having this service all the time.

I could see this operating at many levels. I am biking, it is a hot day, get fluids delivered. All the way to, I am camping, in pretty much the middle of nowhere and get a missing item delivered, or just some icecream.

This would ideally also extend to some sort of courier service. My kid forgets their homework; for a very reasonable fee, it gets delivered.

If the delivery can be something larger like an entire order of groceries, then all the better. But packages under 1kg would still make my life a whole lot better.

"navigates the sidewalks at a pedestrian pace"

[Nutria]

But there's a reason that we domesticated horses, built carriages, trains, bicycles, automobiles and trucks: we want stuff faster than walking speed.

same as Starship.xyz

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to be very similar to what http://www.starship.xyz is doing

What will happen when it gets smart enough

[mark_reh]

to realize that the quickest way around campus is knocking people over instead of going around them? It will only have to do it a few times before people hear about it and then steer clear of the robot.

If it continues to get smarter, it may decide that intimidating students into carrying its packages is the fastest way to get the job done.

A more political interpretation of this is that they're trying to replace student labor with robots. I think the students should file a law suit - delivering packages ar

Great Idea

[Jim Sadler]

Each robot could be programmed as if each neighborhood was contained like a campus. That way the individual robot could have far more data about the one campus it serves instead of trying to process data for an entire town or city. So one robot could carry goods from the point of origin to the start point for the "campus", pass the packages to the neighborhood robot and return, leaving the neighborhood robot to finalize the delivery. The "campus" robot could have a local charging station and shelter

Re:

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

So what, the robots would need to... couple... to exchange the package?

Look mom! The robots are having sex again!

Far to go before this is like human delivery

[Applehu Akbar]

The UPS version will use a builtin T-shirt cannon to blast packages against your front door and then run. The Postal Service version will need a sound sensor that will allow the device to run away in abject fear if it detects a Yorkie inside your house.

No need to move your fat asses!

[DogDude]

Thanks to Amazon and shit like this, soon there won't be any reason at all for fat asses to even leave their house! Yaay! What a wonderful world that'll be. A bunch of suicidal fat asses clicking and swiping in their individual houses/apartments their entire lives! No stores. No schools. It'll be a fat-ass utopia!

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[Lodlaiden]

Life for the rest of us will be so much better, and less crowded if they stay in their Matrix Pod.

Duff

[slipped_bit]

I won't be happy until I can say "Siri, have Amazon drone me a beer" and have a cold one delivered within seconds through the mysteriously already opened window right next to me.

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[Gussington]

You don't own a fridge?