Delivery Robot Operators are Also Working From Home

Peter Daniels is one of the millions of Americans working from home because of the coronavirus. Daniels, 29, stopped commuting to his job at delivery startup Postmates in mid-March. Now, instead of making a half-hour trip from his apartment in San Francisco’s Sunset District to the company’s office downtown, he moves a few feet from his bed to his desk. From there, five days a week, Daniels watches delivery robots as they roll along sidewalks 350 miles away in Los Angeles. The bots drive themselves from their dispatch center to the restaurants and shop-pickup points, then to customers’ homes. If one gets stuck, it pings Daniels or one of his fellow fleet supervisors for help.

“The most common thing is construction or just a torn-up sidewalk,” said Daniels in a phone interview. “We have to figure out how to get around that.” From his widescreen desktop monitor, he sees what a robot sees and guides it around obstacles, using his keyboard. The setup and the software are made by Phantom Auto, a Mountain View, California, startup that provides remote driving technology for just about anything with wheels and a wireless internet connection, from cars, trucks and forklifts to yard trucks and delivery robots.