Serve Robotics has announced a pilot partnership with Wing Aviation to expand its autonomous food delivery offerings without requiring restaurants to install new equipment to accommodate drones.
Serve, which spun out of app-based delivery company Postmates in 2021, has been delivering Uber Eats food deliveries in Los Angeles for several years, using robots that look like autonomous shopping carts. Serve says its delivery robots can be a safer alternative to cars and help reduce traffic congestion since they are primarily used on sidewalks. Since they have a top speed of about six miles per hour, there should be little to no danger to pedestrians. However, this approach also limits the robot's ability to deliver groceries on time.
Although Serve claims its robots have a range of up to 25 miles when transporting 50 pounds of groceries, Dr. According to Ali Kashani, half of the delivery trips in Los Angeles take place “within two miles of a restaurant.” CEO and co-founder of Serve.
The pilot partnership with Wing, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, is an attempt to expand this delivery area to a six-mile radius using a multi-modal robot-to-drone delivery solution. Last year, Wing unveiled its Wing Delivery Network, which includes AutoLoader stations where deliveries are picked up by its autonomous drones. Retailers can install these AutoLoader stations in their parking lots, but this is not an option for smaller restaurants.
The pilot partnership will initially roll out in Dallas, where “select wing deliveries” will be picked up at a restaurant by one of Serve’s delivery robots. The robot will then take it to a Wing AutoLoader station “a few blocks away,” according to Serve, where a drone will complete the delivery. Because Wing's drones fly at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour and are not slowed down by traffic lights or traffic jams on the road, the partnership will potentially offer a best-of-both-worlds approach to autonomous food delivery.
The service is expected to launch in the next few months and will also help Wing expand its drone delivery services to merchants located in areas with limited space and who do not want to hire additional staff as intermediaries.