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Robot on Thames Path (still from Paul Ready helmet cam footage)Delivery droids: friend or foe to cyclists?
After decades of SciFi movies predicting it would happen, robots are now becoming a part of modern life; from flying drones delivering parcels, to ones that light our way and, most recently, “pavement droids” bringing us dinner (at least those of us living in a small area of Greenwich).
This month, Just Eat announced it would use semi-automated pavement droids to collect food from restaurants and deliver it to homes within a small area of Greenwich, London, with plans to roll the robots out across the capital next year. The small, six wheeled robots, can reach speeds of up to 4mph, and operate on pavements. They still need a human to help them cross the road, though.
Cyclists who came across one on the Thames Path, near Greenwich, at the weekend, expressed a mixture of bafflement, amusement and concern at sharing space with a small, moving robot. The diminutive machine was filmed by cyclist Paul Ready along the Thames Path in London yesterday.
He said: “I know being a cyclist you feel as if everything is trying to step out in front of you or knock you off your bike, we even have these little robot things. You may not have them where you are but they travel about walking speed and just come out of side paths so you have very little time to avoid them.
He added: “There are a lot in Greenwich at the moment, I just think they could be dangerous, especially when the weather is bad or it is dark. Who knows, maybe they will just be fair weather robots.”
Video: Fleetlights - a personal drone that lights your way
Starship Technologies, who have designed and manufactured the six-wheel pavement droid, confirmed to road.cc the machine in question, a six wheeled “pavement droid” was being tested on the pedestrian portion of the Thames Path – the section of cycle path beside which Ready spotted the droid is currently closed for nearby construction work.
Henry Harris-Burland, of Starship Technologies, explained the droid testing process to road.cc, and how the robots, which could be rolled out across London as early as next year, will interact with cyclists. He said this particular robot was “under complete human operation”, driven remotely, while being overseen by a human handler walking alongside it, near to the company’s office.
Generally-speaking, he said, a testing phase for the robots creates “lanes” on pavements, on which the robots operate, and from which they cannot stray. These will exclude cycle paths.
British Cycling using drone technology to try to give BMX riders Olympic edge (+ video)
He said: “We map an area, a neighbourhood, and after we have mapped that neighbourhood the robot will know where it can and can’t go - so it almost creates lanes where it can and can’t operate.”
He said the robots can “navigate and triangulate their locations to the nearest inch” and so once the mapping was complete, they could not turn into a bike lane, and would stop if they encountered one.
On shared use paths, where space between cyclists and pedestrians is not delineated, he said: “slow and steady wins the race.”
He added: “We have a very sophisticated computer vision system, that’s how robots navigate”.
In terms of concerns that robots will suddenly appear out of side streets, he said on a blind corner it acts “just like a pedestrian”.
“This robot is a pedestrian robot, the maximum speed is 4mph, but that is not the average speed. If you think about what a pedestrian would do on a blind corner they would go around very slowly and if they needed to, would stop. That is how the robot acts as well.”
Drones - the next big thing in cycle safety, or a case of too much blue sky thinking?
Cyclist Christopher Reeve spotted the robot, too. He said: “I passed that little fella today. When I overtook it I think I spooked it as it quickly moved over to the grass verge.”
However, cyclist Alex Ingram is less enamoured with them. He said: "Driven by humans over the Internet from Eastern Europe. It's a daft startup who've failed to work out a bike would be more efficient.
"I'm not keen on them either. Suspect most likely is an OAP trips over one."
However, Harris-Burland argued the robots were safe. He said: “We have done over 14,000 miles of testing on the pavements around the area, and we haven’t had an accident or incident yet.”
“We take the safety of cyclists and pedestrians incredibly seriously.”
He said the robots have lights and flags to help them be seen in low light. The company has operators in London, Estonia and San Francisco.
“Visibility is obviously incredibly important to us,” he said. “At the moment we are testing for all of these reasons; the robot has met nearly 2.5 million people on its travels; we have done a lot of visibility testing, some of these things have come up and have been resolved.”
Sophisticated as the robots may be, they cannot yet cross a road by themselves.
“At the moment cars are the most dangerous thing, which is probably the same for cyclists,” said Harris-Burland. “Road crossings are done under human operation at the moment. They will stop at a junction and ping [a message] to a human operator, who will take over.”
He said although the area of Greenwich, extending approximately a mile around a row of restaurants near Greenwich Park, is currently small, the company is looking to expand.
A press release from Just Eat and Starship Technologies, said: “After five months of exhaustive testing in the area, the first live delivery signals the next step in this revolutionary pilot program which will see local Just Eat customers receive automated robot deliveries in Greenwich. There are plans to expand the program across London in 2017.”
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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36 comments
I'm a bit of a fan of this new and evolving technology. Machines having spacial awareness will lead to a range of gains over the next couple of decades. At the moment there seems to be a fetish for creating delivery drones, and driverless cars. Both of which would be massively profitable, but come with huge technological hurdles.
There will be gains for cyclists. eg Machines routinely sweeping & maintaining cycle paths. Even the routine fixing of potholes, with surfaces levels accurate to the sub millimetre level.
But.... There is an obvious issue in this country for this delivery drone, and for obvious reasons I'm suprised it hasn't been raised here. It appears that it is illegal to for these vehcilces to be on the Footways, paths, and cycle paths.
Most cyclists should be aware that is illegal to ride on a Footway? The same law applies to these drones. They definatly fall under one of the 'objects' which must not be lead or driven on a footway. They might be able to argue it's not being driven or lead, because it's "driverless". If think any such arguement would fail in court. The drone is not sentiant, it can not find it's way without software written by a human. All that must be demonstrated is that it is being lead. Leading via software might be indirect, but it is still a form of leading.
So whats going on with regard to the law??
The police & council can not pass a blind eye to this and still fine cyclists.
I'm guessing that's why the speed is so low. Wheelchairs and mobility scooters.
There will be a craze of putting them on a couple of bricks. Their little wheels running around but going nowhere. Funny as. No damage, no vandalism, nothing criminal, just a bit of subversion.
Testing them out on the Thames path......SPLASH
Looking forward to seeing these in the future. We used to steal traffic cones etc when drunk. Imagine how much fun it's going to be turning these robots onto their backs then waiting for someone to come and right them!
"They still need a human to help them cross the road, though."
And I'd like to see it walking up some steps and pressing the doorbell, lol. Not very finished.
We see you comin'. And we got our defences up.
Also works on wheelchair users and parents with prams and pushchairs.
I had to google pushcchair to make sure it was a word, and am not having another 'aeroplane station' moment.
Now if they'd made them look like daleks, complete with funny voices saying "exterminate, Exterminate, EXTERMINATE!" they'd get my vote.
While I do appreciate the intent here, and I do agree that low environmental impact deliveries are a good idea I prefer the flying delivery drones from Amazon, to be honest. These little JE units are probably going to meet a sticky end once the novelty wears off. Is it illegal to stick one in a wheelie bin? Or surround it with shopping trolleys? I suspect some people will want to find out if they can float... CCTV isn't going to achieve a whole lot against a balaclava.
"All your pizza base are belong to us..."
Hi LastBoyScout,
In answer to your question, the main purpose of our delivery robots is to make delivery more efficient in the last mile. We aim to reduce congestion on our roads and pollution in our cities. Our robots, in the future, drive 99% autonomously, only asking for human help 1% of the time.
At the moment if we order a takeaway curry, most of the time a person turns up in a 1.5 ton car, which in reality is a huge inefficiency (the human, the car, the petrol - all for my 1kg curry). We aim to make this delivery process much more efficient with electric, small, safe robots that deliver within 15-30 mins in a 1-2 mile radius. A lot of the time, many businesses can't cope with demand, and deliveries turn up late or not at all. These robots can assist with that demand.
Another benefit of the robots is to assist the elderely and less able. We've found through our testing that many people are reliant on public transport or family members to go to the grocery store. Our robots can give them some power back by delivering straight to their door - and so far we've seen great success.
Another area we're focusing on is opening up delivery to local businesses who previously found it unaffordable. Delivery is very expensive and most local shops/bakerys etc cannot offer delivery because of this. We're aiming to get our on-demand delivery robots down to the price of £1 or lower, per delivery. This then gives local businesses the same opportunity as bigger companies in the local neighbourhood and puts them on a level footing.
Happy to discuss this in more detail at anytime. We want to unite with cyclists to make sure the number of cars and vans on our roads decrease as its only getting worse!
Henry
Hi, Henry,
No problem with the aim in principle, but given the size of the robot and the assumption that they only have one or 2 very small cargo compartments, they're going to have to keep returning to base after 1-2 deliveries to recharge and collect next cargo. Short of swapping batteries, they'll have a fairly significant downtime, surely?
It's a valid point when referenced to a curry, but a savvy takeaway could deliver more than one meal per trip. If you extend to groceries and non-perishable goods, then a courier van with multiple drops is surely more efficient timewise than something that needs to make frequent returns to base.
Failing that, companies like Deliveroo seem to be doing a pretty brisk trade around here for the distances you're quoting.
Many elderly also have home help and assisted living. I'd argue that many elderly people rely on the human contact for one and I'm not sure many of those you're targetting would be able to operate the droids - someone in a wheel chair could struggle to lift anything out of one, let alone understand how they have to open it.
I'm not sure you've correctly identified your target audience here, based on size. I can't imagine any business local to me that doesn't already offer some form of delivery wanting to deliver anything in the quantities your droids seem capable of carrying, due to the admin overheads.
On top of that, these small businesses won't have the capital to buy their own droid, so you'll need to have depots to house them, so they'll have to go to the business, be loaded, deliver then return to base and repeat.
I'm sorry, but I just can't see that the market is there.
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I suspect it will not be droid vs bike that will be the issue but pedestians, okay you'll spot folks with a white cane, but plenty more who will not have such clear clues, my self my moblity on foot isn't great, and a drone. even if it's well behaved would cause me concern.
A classic case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should"!
If they can't cross a road themselves and need a remote operator to drive them, what point are they actually serving?
From my house to my nearest takeaway (a tiny independent pizza place) is about a mile with about 12 road crossings, depending on which route/side of the road you're on. If it needs to summon a human to help it on every one of them, it'll take forever.
You'd need a fleet of people on bicycles working for you - oh, wait...
How do these robots cope with steps and lifts ? I can see them being taken out by Hungryhouse Stealth drones.
they should have made robot cows. That way they could have coped with steps really easily. Going up, anyway. Cows can't walk downstairs so they have to slide down the banister. I don't know how they cope with lifts - I've never seen a cow in a lift. It would be a bit stupid anyway.
That would be this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxnK8SdrxT0
Don't know if they can slide down banisters though.
I've used Just Eat once, had a shit chinese meal, took ages to be delivered, turned up cold and they missed something off my order. Left an appropriate review and my wife received a threatening call from the restaurant when I was out. So I won't be using them again whatever they use to deliver.
Robots don't even pay road tax!
you beat me to it!
If Just Eat wants to use public infrastructure for their own corporation gains then they should pay the associated costs and taxes with doing so.
Unlike paid employees, these drones will put nothing financially back into the system.
Hmm, that sounds a lot like road tax and cyclists nonsense. The takeaway companies that just eat work with are probably paying quite a lot in rates and tax already!
That said the thought of these things doesnt greatly excite me. I'd rather have a takeaway delivered by a cyclist at 11mph than a robot at 4 - the food would be warmer!
If it's within walking distance anyway, 9/10 Id go and get the takeaway myself anyway.
Genuine question: what are the costs and taxes associated with using the pavement that they should be paying? If they use bike couriers they're using public infrstructure, aren't they...?
Public infrastructure costs lots of money. It's funded largely through taxes. Paid employees pay tax and there are also employer contributions. Generally speaking, people put in, and people get out. Sure, there are exceptions.
In this instance, there is nothing going in. Larger margins for Just Eat, exploiting public infrastructure without putting anything back in.
You could say the same about any business that uses the roads*/pavements/etc. though, right? There's no special rate or charge AFAIK, so how is this different?
*VED aside, because everyone pays it.
Hello everyone,
My name is Henry, from Starship (in the article above). I want to address some of the concerns, or answer any other questions you may have about our little delivery robots. We take cyclist safety incredibly seriously and would love to talk in more detail about this.
In regards to theft, the robots have tracking, alarms, cameras and audio whilst the lid is locked as well during a delivery. We have found through testing these work well for theft prevention. The robots carry no branding, so you don't know whats inside. They also deliver packages and groceries (not just pizza's!)
I'm very happy to answer any more questions that may arise, either here or directly. I can be contacted at henry.harris-burland [at] starship.co if you want to email me.
Also, I welcome everyone that's interested to come and have a look at our robots first hand in Greenwich. If anybody wants to visit our office, please do come and say hello! If you want to read more about our robots and our company, feel free to visit www.starship.xyz
Thank you!
I will come and see them, as I do have a few questions.
Paul
I think you're going to be sadly dissapointed, I don't think that theft is going to be your biggest problem, they will just be wrecked for the "fun" of it.
can they swim?
Ha, ha ha! Nice joke. Profit is the only thing anyone takes serious. It will take cyclists suing for injuries to make them care. If you are in Greenwich make sure to carry a camera so you will have evidence for a lawsuit.
If I saw one obstructing a cycling path I would give it a quick tail whip on passing to see if I could knock one over. (Years of practice knocking off beer cans and rocks, now a bigger better targets!)
Which means it will randomly walk out in front of cyclists without looking at the worst possible moments causing all sorts of carnage then will quickly run away in hopes that no one was looking.
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