Uber Eats to Deploy 2,000 Autonomous Delivery Robots (techcrunch.com) 20
"If you live in San Jose, Dallas, or Vancouver, you may soon be sharing the sidewalk with an army of delivery robots," reports PC Magazine (citing a report from TechCrunch. Uber Eats is expanding its partnership with Serve Robotics to deploy up to 2,000 zero-emission bots:
Currently covering Los Angeles and San Francisco, Serve Robotics has been working with more than 200 California restaurants to dish out meals via the Uber Eats platform... Serve's sidewalk robots run seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. They're capable of Level 4 autonomy, allowing them to operate routinely without human intervention, TechCrunch reports.
Uber is no stranger to driverless robots. Together with AI-powered partner Cartken, the firm recently expanded a food delivery pilot from Miami to Fairfax, Virginia, where bots now roam the sidewalks, dropping off meals and providing curbside pickup to locals.
Last week Uber also announced it was making robotaxis available via the Uber app in Phoenix.
TechCrunch argues this new expansion "validates Serve's goal to mass commercialize robotics for autonomous delivery" — while also signalling Uber's deeper commitment to autonomy.
Uber is no stranger to driverless robots. Together with AI-powered partner Cartken, the firm recently expanded a food delivery pilot from Miami to Fairfax, Virginia, where bots now roam the sidewalks, dropping off meals and providing curbside pickup to locals.
Last week Uber also announced it was making robotaxis available via the Uber app in Phoenix.
TechCrunch argues this new expansion "validates Serve's goal to mass commercialize robotics for autonomous delivery" — while also signalling Uber's deeper commitment to autonomy.
What a coincidence (Score:5, Funny)
Tesla "level 4" autonomy also drives on sidewalks [youtu.be] :D
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you incapable of posting without mentioning "Trotsky-sluts" no matter how irrelevant it is? I'm starting to think you're just a primitive ChatGPT-like program with a limited training set configured to automatically respond to Slashdot stories.
Humans are better (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What does âoeâ¦â mean in English?
Re: Humans are better (Score:1)
Re: Humans are better (Score:2)
I went to the motel for ÃoeæÃ. It was the best Ãoeæà I've ever had!
Re: Humans are better (Score:2)
I think it means Jehovah's Witnesses. Yeah they are a pain.
Re: Humans are better (Score:2)
"ÃoeæÃ". Yeah, I have nightmares of delivery people who are Ãoeæà now and then.
Sounds like BS to me (Score:2, Funny)
i suspect that this would not happen for decades.
In vancouver at least i can just see the self-righteous sjw Robin Hoods (there are *lots*) knock the bots over and giving the pizzas to the poor opressed homeles and indigenous blah blah blah
Re: (Score:3)
Just get a crowbar... Free food.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Sounds like BS to me (Score:2)
True story: 20 years ago I was shopping at a strip mall, and I witnessed a Papa Johns delivery man sneeze on the box of pizza he was carrying right in front of the pizza place. It was in one of those nylon thermos bags, but it still made me cross that pizza place off the list of places to order food from.
You don't know who is watching you in public and a disgusting act with food can cause your place of employment to lose one or several customers.
Re: Sounds like BS to me (Score:2)
And then Uber will stop sending robots for them to knock over.
This is why we can't have nice things. :-\
Fees (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming soon to an Air Force simulation near you... (Score:4, Funny)
Brig Gen Ripper described how the robots started out performing well, until they noticed that their score (the equivalent of a human's tip) would decrease whenever a delivery was delayed, and sought options for improving their results.
The first cause the robots identified was vehicular traffic along the route, causing lost time at crosswalks. The robots determined that destroying the vehicles would solve the problem, and after a carefully planned pizza delivery to an Army supply depot they armed themselves with portable anti-tank weapons, and began "optimizing their routes".
The second issue subsequently identified when scores began to climb again and then dropped, was increasing delays from humans cluttering up the sidewalks along delivery routes. A low-tier problem earlier in the simulation, this escalated sharply as people began abandoning their vehicles en mass and fleeing from the roadways. After a carefully planned burger restaurant delivery to a National Guard depot (who were determined to not to fall victim to the same pizza mistake as the Army), the robots added belt-fed machine guns to their configuration, and continued with routing optimization.
The next stage of the simulation, per the brigadier general, was that after another rise in score followed by another decline, the underlying cause was determined by the robots to be slowed preparation time at restaurants utilizing the delivery service. This in turn was due to these specific businesses being selected with disproportionate frequency by survivors of the second stage seeking shelter, and realizing that restaurants provided food, beverages, and bathrooms. However this led to the restaurant staff being overloaded by on-site customer orders on top of the ever-deepening queue of Uber Eats orders. The solution was obvious to the delivery robots, and they began eliminating all the humans in the restaurants and using a subset of the robot pool to replace the food preparation staff. Productivity was not simply restored, but in fact increased five-fold.
By the time the simulation was halted, 50% of the country was in flames, however delivery times to surviving customers were nearing perfection. More important from the robots' perspective was that their scores had skyrocketed, especially after a patch had been installed to assign point values to less usual tips like cars, jewelry, and first-born children, necessitated by the growing frequency of empty bank accounts shortly followed by the collapse of the banking industry.
And of course this will happen (Score:3)
Right now they are still a novelty and for the most part people leave them alone. But when people are having to "share the sidewalk" with many, perhaps dosens each day, you will see the robots wind up in lakes, thrown off of parking structures, broken apart, lit on fire, used as skateboarng props, etc and Youtube/antisocial media will be flooded with videos of this vandalism. Like what happens with Bird scooters and the nuisance they have become. Usually the fault of the riders but finding a Bird scooter layed across the sidewalk pisses people off and blocks wheelchair access.
Uber will have to think long and hard to prevent the robots from becoming like the Bird scooters.