Food delivery , a delivery robot from Poland Deployments of food delivery robots were in a small scale prior to the
COVID-19 pandemic. By January 2019, there were some deployments on United States college campuses.
George Mason University became the first university campus that incorporated on-demand food deliveries by robots as part of its meal plan with 25 robot fleet from
Starship Technologies. As the pandemic continued on, demands for food deliveries had increased significantly. This caused the demands for food delivery robots in college campuses to surge as well. Also, Yandex uses self-development delivery robots for its delivery service «
Yandex Eats» and «» () in a number of Russian cities since 2019. Limitations of using food delivery robots includes inability to accommodate special delivery requests such as leaving the food at the door, and inability to navigate difficult terrains. This may require remote operators to help the robots to navigate around obstacles. By November 2020, said Starship Technologies, Milton Keynes had the "world's largest autonomous robot fleet". Early 2022 saw the opening of Nourish + Bloom, the first African American-owned autonomous grocery store in the world. The new store processes transactions using computer vision equipment in tandem with artificial intelligence-based voice and gesture technology. Nourish + Bloom offers delivery service using robotic vehicles supplied by
Daxbot. That startup, which is based in Philomath, Oregon, and raising investments through a crowdfunding campaign, has developed a unit that can travel up to 10 miles at 4 mph and has a temperature-controlled cargo space.
Package delivery (Spring 2022) In 2019,
Amazon launched an experiment to deliver small packages to their
Amazon Prime customers using delivery robots called
Amazon Scout. The test was done in
Seattle region of the United States and expanded to
Irvine, California,
Atlanta, and
Franklin, Tennessee. In 2021, after testing of package delivery robots had been done in 4 U.S. cities, Amazon created a new development center in Finland to make further advancement in the technology in order for their robots to better handle real-life navigations. The company cancelled Amazon Scout in 2023.
Hospital delivery Delivery robots can perform several tasks in hospital settings to reduce operational costs. The first set of tasks are for food, medical specimens, and medicine deliveries. With multiple sensors, the delivery robots can navigate the interior layout of the hospitals. They also have an electronic signal that can request an elevator ride to be able to work in multi-story buildings. With security concerns, some delivery robots are equipped with code and a
biometric fingerprint scan to prevent unauthorized access to the contents inside the robots. there were more than 150 hospitals in the United States and elsewhere that deployed the delivery robots. The second set of tasks is to deliver soiled linen carts and medical waste. These requires heavy duty delivery robots as the weights to carry could be in several hundred pounds (several hundred kilograms). In Israel,
Sheba Medical Center uses delivery robots to shuttle
chemotherapy drugs prepared by the pharmacy department directly to the nurses to cut down the waiting time.
Room service in Singapore, navigates from lobby to guest room In late 2014, a room service robot named Relay was introduced by a robotics startup company, Savioke. When hotel staff received an order from a guest, the staff would put items inside Relay and the robot would deliver items to the guest room. By 2016, fleets of Relay robots were deployed at five major hotel chains. In August 2017,
M Social hotel in Singapore introduced room service robots named AURA to assist staff in tasks such as delivering bottled water and towels to guest rooms. It was the first such service outside of the United States.
Infrastructure inspection Sidewalk disruptions and the slope of
access ramps are being inspected and reported by a Daxbot robot. == Companies ==