Robot Deliveries On The Rise In Ann Arbor, MI

The use of robots to make deliveries in Ann Arbor has
increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
​

Robot Deliveries On The Rise In Ann Arbor WEMU

Refraction AI has four self-driving REV-1 robots delivering restaurant orders and groceries in Ann Arbor. While the company is not revealing how many deliveries the robots make a week, co-founder Ram Vasudevan says they have more than tripled during the pandemic. He says consumers are asking for contactless delivery options.

"As we move forward beyond this crisis, I think showing that we can do this well will illustrate that this is something that makes sense as a business."

The robots, which look like a recumbent bicycle, travel between 12 to 15 miles per hour, and on an average, delivery takes between 20 to 30 minutes.

Continue reading...

 

​

Refraction’s Bike Messenger Robots Find ‘Goldilocks Zone’ Of Autonomous Delivery pymnts.com

As the past year has driven demand for affordable, convenient food delivery options to unprecedented levels, grocery leaders have been racing to come up with the most reliable and cost-effective options. Between Instacart’s recent $39 billion valuation, DoorDash’s introduction of on-demand grocery delivery, and funds pouring in at home and abroad for grocery and restaurant delivery solutions that promise to make the industry’s narrow margins work in their favor, it is becoming an increasingly competitive space. One company, robotics startup Refraction AI, which recently brought in $4.2 million in seed funding, may have found a solution — the REV-1 autonomous delivery robot, modeled after a traditional bike messenger.

“What's different about [Refraction] is that, conventionally, last-mile delivery in this space happens using DoorDash or Grubhub or something like that,” Refraction’s CEO Luke Schneider told PYMNTS in a recent interview. “And it's typically a gig economy worker driving a car, which is great and all, except it's sort of like bringing a ballistic missile to a knife fight.”

He added that the cost of using cars and employing human drivers for every delivery “is actually pretty big,” explaining that “it's not just the financial cost — it’s the cost of congestion, the cost of time and the cost of the quality of customer experience.”

Identifying The 'Goldilocks Zone'

Refraction’s delivery robots, Schneider explained, are “really about the size of a bicycle — in fact, it’s based on a recumbent bike frame.” He added that unlike car deliveries, which can be dangerous and costly — and unlike sidewalk robots, which tend to be slow, not carry much and depend on contiguous sidewalks — Refraction’s robot, the REV-1, is “ideally sized to ride in the margins of the road.”

The robot was developed by two University of Michigan professors ...

Continue reading...