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Wing and Serve Robotics have joined forces to provide autonomous food deliveries to customers in Texas within the next few months.
The companies say this move will “redefine last-mile delivery” and ensure deliveries arrive faster as ground robots navigate on sidewalks while drones fly above traffic gridlocks.
According to the partners, deliveries will be left on the curb or sidewalk outside participating restaurants, where they’ll be collected by a Serve delivery robot.
It will deliver the food autonomously to a nearby Wing drone Autoloader before the drone picks up the delivery and takes it to customers as far as six miles away.
BREAKING: @ServeRobotics has announced a pilot partnership with @Wing, increasing the reach and efficiency of autonomous delivery.
Learn more: https://t.co/FakXjFbgQ5 pic.twitter.com/N3jaIkX0cH
— Serve Robotics (@ServeRobotics) October 1, 2024
Dr. Ali Kashani, CEO and co-founder of Serve Robotics, said that the robotic delivery solution will be “the most efficient mode for the significant majority of deliveries.”
Robot-to-Drone Deliveries Could Be Sustainable and Cost-Effective
Robot-to-drone deliveries are designed to significantly extend delivery range and ensure faster deliveries compared to using ground robots alone. They also let merchants use robotic services without making any changes to their workflow or facilities.
Other benefits of robot-to-drone deliveries reportedly include:
- Cost effectiveness – there’s no need to pay or tip couriers.
- Sustainability – both technologies are 100% electric.
- Enhanced Safety – Fewer vehicles on the road should reduce traffic accidents.
The technology isn’t uniformly positive. The increased automation reduces the need for human delivery staff. It can’t always reach customers, as drones need a safe place for the drone to drop off its goods. And while it reduces traffic, there are chances people will try to poach meals from robots or shoot down drones.
With test deliveries commencing in Dallas, Texas in the next few months, we’ll need to wait to hear more about the operating area and fleet size from Serve Robotics at launch.
Serve Robotics and Wing Both Have Strong Delivery Credentials
Serve Robotics spun out from Uber as an independent company in 2021 and develops AI-powered autonomous sidewalk delivery robots.
In 2022, it partnered with Uber Eats to deploy up to 2,000 delivery robots across multiple US cities. In August of this year, it signed a deal with Shake Shack offering robot deliveries to some customers, starting in Los Angeles.
Wing is part of Alphabet (which also owns Google) and designs, manufactures, and deploys delivery drones. To date it has carried out over 400,000 commercial deliveries of everything from food and drink to medication to customers in three continents: the US, Europe, and Australia.
Recently, Wing started offering grocery deliveries in as little as 30 minutes to Walmart customers in Dallas Fort-Worth, Texas.
Wing and Serve Robotics believe this partnership is an important step towards ensuring autonomous delivery becomes the most common mode of transportation for small packages around the world. It will certainly help expand the range and speed of robotic food deliveries in busy cities.
