A new collaboration between delivery robot start-up Starship Technologies based in Tallinn, Estonia, and German car maker Mercedes-Benz will see the Mercedes van function as a mothership for fleets of delivery robots, reports New Scientist.
This is the vision: a van pulls up in a village street and a ramp extends to the pavement from a side door. A swarm of wheeled robots trundle down the ramp and head off down local streets on missions of their own. Their cargo delivered, they head back up the ramp and the van drives off.
Amazon is testing flying drones to deliver packages, but the e-commerce giant faces a raft of regulatory hurdles before its bots take off. In the meantime, ground-based delivery robots are ready to go.
The main problem with delivery bots is battery life. If robots are to be used to deliver packages across a whole country, rather than just in cities, they need a helping hand. Most existing robots can only manage trips of 2 to 3 kilometres.
This is where Mercedes comes in. It announced on September 7 that it is developing a variant of its workhorse van, the Sprinter. The vans will act as motherships for fleets of up to eight delivery bots, says Volker Mornhinweg at Mercedes.
Starship’s six-wheeled robots can carry 10 kilograms worth of parcels, groceries and takeaway food to homes at precise times of a customer’s choosing. On arrival, the customer unlocks the beetle-like robot’s shiny carapace via an app on their phone and takes out their goods. In the UK, Starship is piloting its robot services in Greenwich with takeaway food service Just Eat.
