Why use - and pay for - a car or bike when a robot can do the job for you?
That’s the view of robot-based delivery service company Coco at least, which has already attracted millions of dollars of investment after successfully showcasing its products on the streets of Los Angeles in recent years.
It has earned its reputation by guaranteeing to deliver takeaway orders - including ice cream - within 30 minutes around the city, with drivers operating the robots by remote control.
Now the firm is looking to accelerate its rollout across major cities in the US, putting more of its Coco 1 robots (more box on wheels than Terminator in styling, we have to admit) on the streets, ready to deliver everything from food orders through to bigger purchases such as weekly shopping to your door.
The expansion plan is possible thanks to a new partnership with software and connectivity firm DriveU.auto, which specialises in live video streaming, allowing operators to control the robots far more effectively than has been the case to date.
Operators control the robots by sending signals via public cellular networks - which can be unstable, forcing them to stop the robots and wait for them to reconnect. The new software-based connectivity platform is said to remove video latency and instability, and has already been tested in cars, trucks and shuttles.
Coco isn’t the only operator in thais space, however, and for now its focus is on the US market. In the UK, Starship Technologies has been operating in Milton Keynes since 2015, reporting a huge surge in orders during the pandemic as people tried to avoid face-to-face contact of any kind.
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