Autonomous Robots to Begin Delivering Food and Parcels in Europe
- Metro, Just Eat, Hermes and Prontok trial ground-based drone
- Starship, backed by Skype alumni, begins customer deliveries
A radio antenna and camera units sit on a prototype self driving parcel delivery robot, developed by Starship Technologies, during testing in a residential district of Tallinn, Estonia, on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. The electric-powered robots intend to help short-range low cost deliveries and ultimately aim to make the local delivery of goods free.
The next time you order food using the delivery app Just Eat in London, don’t be surprised if it’s brought to your door by a small, six-wheeled robot.
London-listed Just Eat Plc. will join German retail chain Metro AG, logistics company Hermes Group, and U.K. food delivery startup Pronto Technology Ltd., in trialing delivery using self-driving robots. Starship Technologies, the company that makes the droids, said Wednesday that Just Eat and Pronto will be using the robots in London, while Metro and Hermes will deploy them in Dusseldorf, Germany, and Bern, Switzerland, as well as another undisclosed German city.