The future is as daunting as it is replete with excitement. Though many of us will spend hard-earned money to visit fortune tellers and gain insight into how we will fare in a decade or two, there is no possible way to predict our fate. I believe that this immense frustration drives the creative minds of our generation to conceptualize and create technologies that were previously thought to be something from a science fiction double feature. It would seem that if one possesses enough capital, the future is fully within the scope of their reality.
Earlier this year, Starship Technologies, a company created by two former Skype co-founders, was purposed with building robots to “revolutionize neighborhood deliveries and offer people convenient new service that improves everyday life,” according to their official website.
“Robotics has a huge potential to change the world and improve people’s lives. We’ve always been attracted to big problems. And delivery is still a big problem, probably a bigger problem than helping people communicate over long distances.”
-Ahti Heinla, Co-Founder, Starship Technologies
Since the company’s inception, Starship has tested its autonomous delivery bots in multiple rounds of deployments. Back in April 2018, the company tested its little robots on the Intuit Mountain View campus in the heart of Silicon Valley, as a means for delivering lunch to employees around the campus. The founders of Starship want to provide a service for people that make their lives easier and more efficient.
According to their press release immediately following the Intuit Launch, the starship fleet enabled employees to “order food and drink via the Starship app for delivery throughout their workday across all 4.3 acres of the Intuit campus.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time before a tech company with just a smidge more clout entered the space of robotic delivery systems and, like clockwork, Amazon (AMZN) had to get in on the automated action. Amazon (AMZN) has made ways way to the pantheon of tech companies by continually investing in new tech to benefit the global market place. The Company today announced that they’ve developed a new, fully-electric autonomous delivery system called “Amazon Scout.”
Although Amazon (AMZN) is not the first company to release “Wall-E”-like delivery bots, it’s pretty obvious that their bot will take the cake over any other competitor in the nascent sector. Come on, it’s Amazon (AMZN), for Scout’s sake. Per the announcement, the first launch of Amazon Scout will take place in Snohomish County, Washington, which borders Seattle’s King County, the location of Amazon’s (AMZN) primary headquarters.
“We’re starting with six Amazon Scout devices, delivering packages Monday through Friday, during daylight hours. The devices will autonomously follow their delivery route but will initially be accompanied by an Amazon employee. We developed Amazon Scout at our research and development lab in Seattle, ensuring the devices can safely and efficiently navigate around pets, pedestrians and anything else in their path. We are excited to work with the community of Snohomish County as our initial partner for Amazon Scout.”
–Amazon Scout official announcement
According to TechCrunch, though the pilot program of Amazon Scout will be used to test the autonomous capabilities of the delivery robots, while the tech is in beta, the robots will be accompanied by Amazon (AMZN) employees until a time where the Company decides Scout is ready to do it by herself. Some tech analysts believe Scout could one day replace last mile logistics typically offered by UPS (UPS), FedEx (FDX), and USPS, which would dramatically change how consumers receive packages/other forms of correspondence. Nevertheless, as I’ve said before, we cannot tell the future, so all we can do is wait.
