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Robot-to-drone food deliveries take off in Dallas

By Paul Ridden
October 01, 2024
Robot-to-drone food deliveries take off in Dallas
The Serve delivery robot will pick up the food order at the restaurant, drop it off at a Wing Auroloader collection point, and then Wing's drone will take to the air for the final leg of the delivery to the customer
The Serve delivery robot will pick up the food order at the restaurant, drop it off at a Wing Auroloader collection point, and then Wing's drone will take to the air for the final leg of the delivery to the customer
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The Serve delivery robot will pick up the food order at the restaurant, drop it off at a Wing Auroloader collection point, and then Wing's drone will take to the air for the final leg of the delivery to the customer
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The Serve delivery robot will pick up the food order at the restaurant, drop it off at a Wing Auroloader collection point, and then Wing's drone will take to the air for the final leg of the delivery to the customer
The Serve delivery robot lifts the package to the Autoloader, the the Wing drone collects it and delivers to a customer within a 6-mile radius
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The Serve delivery robot lifts the package to the Autoloader, the the Wing drone collects it and delivers to a customer within a 6-mile radius

Though not exactly commonplace quite yet, rolling robots have been delivering goods to local customers for a while now. At the same time, packages have been flying overhead by drone. Now Serve Robotics and Wing Aviation are ready to merge the two.

Wing – which is owned by Google's parent, Alphabet – has been moving small packages by air since at least 2018, longer if you include incubation under Alphabet's Project X. The company's "highly automated" battery-electric drones have since delivered "everything from medicine and library books, to hot coffees and fresh cookies to customers" to hundreds of thousands of customers in Australia, the US, Finland and Ireland.

Delivery robots from Uber-backed Serve Robotics haven't been rolling along US sidewalks for quite as long, but the company "has completed tens of thousands of deliveries for enterprise partners such as Uber Eats and 7-Eleven." Now the two entities are merging to extend the reach of the rolling delivery bots in Dallas, TX.

The Serve delivery robot lifts the package to the Autoloader, the the Wing drone collects it and delivers to a customer within a 6-mile radius
The Serve delivery robot lifts the package to the Autoloader, the the Wing drone collects it and delivers to a customer within a 6-mile radius

The pilot project will see food items picked up at restaurants by Serve's robot. This will then make its way to an Autoloader within a radius of a few blocks for transfer to a Wing drone. Then the multi-rotor/fixed-wing hybrid aircraft will take to the air above busy streets to deliver the goods to customers up to 6 miles away.

"We're excited to partner with Wing to offer a multi-modal delivery experience that expands our market from roughly half of all food deliveries that are within 2 miles of a restaurant, to offering 30-minute autonomous delivery across an entire city," said Serve's CEO and co-founder, Dr. Ali Kashani.

"Through this pilot partnership, Wing hopes to reach more merchants in highly-congested areas while supporting Serve as it works to expand its delivery radius," added Wing's CEO, Adam Woodworth.

The partnership reports that this robot-to-drone model should negate the need for businesses to invest in additional infrastructure to support wider-range deliveries, while also indicating that costs for service operators and customers could be lowered. The length of the pilot has not been revealed.

Source: Serve Robotics

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TechnologyWing IncDelivery robotsDelivery drones
3 comments
Paul Ridden
Paul Ridden
While Paul is loath to reveal his age, he will admit to cutting his IT teeth on a TRS-80 (although he won't say which version). An obsessive fascination with computer technology blossomed from hobby into career before hopping over to France for 10 years, where he started work for New Atlas in 2009. Now back in his native Blighty, he serves as Managing Editor in Europe.

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paul314
So this only works within a few blocks plus short drone flight distance, and requires the recipient to be standing outside in a drone-safe place? Hmm.

Maybe if you work in an office building with windows that open.
DMoy
I've been doing home deliveries for over 15 years and have done thousands of deliveries of pizza, beer, wine, etc. I'm a retired engineer and I know a fair amount about robotics and aviation. I am quite certain that robot/drone deliveries will not be successful for the following reasons:

- No current drone that could fly through a neighborhood could carry the weight of a case of beer. Not even a 12-pack.
- A high percentage of delivery orders are for multiple items like a case of beer, a large bottle of wine, and a 60oz bottle of liquor. All adding to the weight
- Many customers order delivery because they are unwilling or unable to go outside to receive the delivery. This is doubly true in the case of bad weather.
- Many customers live in apartment buildings or hotels where no drone or robot could come to their door.
- Many customers are disabled so they can't come to the door and/or they need your assistance to bring the order inside, open the beer case, put bottles into the fridge, open bottles, etc.
- Many orders include the driver taking away empties which are very often not packaged safely and you could not trust the customer to load empties onto a drone safely.
- Many delivery destinations are on streets over-grown with trees and/or wires through which most drones could not navigate.
- I live in Canada. In the winter, I do many deliveries in weather conditions through which no drone could fly.
- When doing alcohol deliveries, I must ensure that the customer identifies him/herself as being at least 19 years old.
- Many deliveries involve multiple stops at different stores: beer/wine, pizza, cigarettes, etc. Drones or robots are unlikely to be able to make those multiple pick-ups and would not be equipped to carry them safely. Store clerks could not be trusted to load a drone safely.
- It's the middle of February. You're in your pajamas, wrapped in a blanket, cuddled up on the couch watching a movie. Outside, it's minus 20 degrees with a raging blizzard. The last thing you want to do is to get up, put on your boots and coat and go out into the blizzard to receive your delivery from a drone.
- Many customers are old and very warry of technologies. Many of them would not wish to get anywhere near a drone or robot.
- A high percentage of my delivery runs involve multiple different orders to multiple different locations. No drone has the capacity to carry that much.

Drone/robot deliveries sounds like a nice idea but for the the reasons I've listed and many more, I know that it's not practical and it's not likely ever to be. Human delivery drives will be around for a long time to come.
A-A-Ron
I live in a suburb of Dallas and this technology looks poised to service millions of customers. There are thousands of houses in the Dallas metroplex that would be well-suited to receive drone deliveries. Restaurants with takeout are plentiful, most neighborhood power lines are underground, trees are small or non-existent in newer developments, many apartments have balconies, and the weather is mild year round (from a drone perspective). Food will definitely stay hot in the summer! Alcohol and heavier deliveries can still take place via the plentiful crowd-sourced auto delivery market.