Investors continue to see a future in autonomous delivery buggies, with the news today that venture-backed California startup Vayu Robotics has launched an “on-road delivery robot” and plans to work with online retailers to slash the cost of e-commerce deliveries.
In Vayu’s view, e-commerce sales are booming but the cost per delivery remains stubbornly high. Its solution is what the firm calls “the world’s first on-road Delivery Robot that combines the power of modern AI foundation models with lidar-less, low-cost passive sensors.”
Palo Alto, California-based Vayu says that traditional mobile robotics rely on costly lidar sensors and software modules built to do one task at a time, leading to expensive hardware and fragile software unable to handle new scenarios. But the firm’s delivery robot operates autonomously without pre-mapping the roads it intends to drive on and is capable of navigating inside stores, on city streets, and unloading packages on driveways or porches, carrying up to 100 lbs at under 20mph.
The company says it recently signed a commercial agreement with a large e-commerce player to deploy 2,500 robots to enable ultra-fast goods delivery. Further details were not disclosed.
Vayu’s rolling robots will be filling a similar niche as several other self-driving, four-wheeled carts that are currently deployed on sites like college campuses and business parks. Examples include Starship Technologies and Nuro.
