An example of a self-driving robot, operated by Starship Technologies, delivering food for Just Eat... [+]
One of Europe’s biggest food-delivery apps, Just Eat, will start testing autonomously-driven robots to bring orders to customer doorsteps in the next few months, making it one of the first such delivery take-out apps to do so.
The robots developed by Estonian startup Starship Technologies drive at a walking pace and can only be unlocked with an access code that customers will get with their order. When the robot is about two minutes away from the front door, it will send customers a smartphone notification, followed by another when it’s at their door. Starship, built by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, says its robots will make all deliveries within 30 minutes.
Just Eat is paying Starship to deploy and monitor six of robots, which are about two-feet high and can cross roads by themselves, in the coming months on behalf of several restaurants in Central London. Most of Just Eat’s customers order from home in the evenings, so many of those confronting the robots for the first time will likely be well-to-do users who can afford to live in the city’s centre.
Though the idea of self-driving robots may sound far-fetched and futuristic, Starship has already been testing them on the streets of London, Berlin and Tallin, Estonia since late last year. In addition to its partnership with Just Eat, it is also now selling its beta service to German delivery firm Hermes, retailer
Just Eat is initially using its first six robots as a trial run this summer, but the company intends to “ramp up” their use in the second half of 2016, according to Just Eat’s chief executive, David Buttress, who believes initial costs of £1 per delivery will go down over time.
“We wouldn’t doing this if we didn’t think it was a scaleable solution for thousands of restaurants,” he added. “We’re thinking big.”
Just Eat has more than 14 million active users in Europe and its marketplace of delivery drivers (who aren't employed directly) deliver food from 64,000 takeaway restaurants.
Buttress said he doesn’t foresee Starship’s robots taking over the jobs of human delivery drivers. Instead, they’ll supplement them at peak evening times when restaurants are often inundated with orders.
They’ll also make it easier for restaurants that don't traditionally deliver food to enter that business for the first time.
“If you’re a non-delivery restaurant and you want to do delivery, you have to do this weird, old-fashioned solution, to find a person on a bike, which doesn’t feel like a tech solution,” said Buttress. “It’s obviously more expensive. This is a really exciting, but also a highly-efficient way to fix delivery long term.”
The robots will initially be stationed at each restaurant, but Buttress said Just Eat will experiment with basing them at independent hubs, for deployment to various restaurants. The company said it would reveal participating restaurants “shortly.”
Starship’s robots are not 100% autonomous. They’re monitored by Starship staff from offices in Tallin and London, and when they come across a temporary obstruction in the road like a parked bike or bag of garbage, a human controller will remotely steer them around.
Starship’s founders don’t think passersby will try to steal the robots. They weigh more than 40 pounds and carry cameras that give a 360 degree view of their surroundings. In their tests over the past nine months, Starship claims the robots have driven nearly 5,000 miles and met more than 400,000 people “without a single accident.”
“This is for real and going to happen. This isn’t a future thing,” said Just Eat's Buttress, who added that he was one of the first people in Britain to order takeout food with one of Starship’s robots - in his case, a curry. “It was really cool.”
