I was recently relaxing on a barging holiday in Milton Keynes and had parked up near Campbell Park. Whilst drinking some coffee I spotted what looked like a dustbin on six wheels zoom past me and then I saw another.
A quick search on my phone I found put that Milton Keynes residents now have the ability to use these little robot delivery vehicles made by Starship Technologies.
Milton Keynes residents can now order goods from certain shops and the shop owners put the orders in the Starship robot and tell it where to go and the robot then drives around the pavements/parks and delivers the orders to the customers.
My initial reactions were wow what an amazing idea and even more amazing was that it was up and running in Milton Keynes.
Whilst this could be great news for consumers could also be the start of the death knell for delivery drivers.
This little Starship robot could be a small wheel for robots but a big tyre for driverless cars.
Imaging the possibilities for businesses who can run the small Starship robot together with a fleet of small and large driverless delivery vans.
The Starship robots can replace the need for deliveries to be made by bikes/moped.No more road rage battles with maniac delivery cyclists and pizza delivery mopeds weaving through the city traffic to hit their deadlines.
The driverless cans replace the other forms of small or large deliveries that customers use. The groups of glum looking men in McDonalds with their empty insulated delivery bags may become a thing of the past.
The scope can be increased even further if the vans come with robots who can carry things from the vans to the houses and also from the houses back to the vans i.e. new fridges/ cookers. Parcel delivery vans could use these and the robots could actually be programmed to care about the parcels they are delivering and not leave them in stupid places or god forbid the robot actually tries to deliver the parcel and not just stick a while you were out notice through your door, perhaps these may become obsolete!!.
The scope for businesses on wheels will also benefit as driverless ice cream vans or mobile driverless coffee vans can be monitored from home/office and moved to where the demand is for them on a changing daily timescale.
I started off by saying I thought the Starship robots were dustbins on wheels. Again there could be a use here as well. Imagine a busy park in the summer where come evening time everyone goes home and leaves all their rubbish. If you had these mobile dustbins travelling around all day it would be hard even for the laziest rubbish dumper not to use them and so help keep the parks clear.
On the subject of rubbish scrap van drivers could send the robots round at night identifying where people have left scrap and target these items when they do there drive rounds.
There must be a downside I hear you cry!. What about all the stories about these pick up and use scooters/bikes/shopping trolleys that end up in rivers or lakes surely these small robots will end up the same. Possibly true but if you fit them with cctv or finger print storage then this might reduce the chances of this happening. Also the police might want to tie in with this having a face recognition system installed like their patrol cars have for identify un-taxed cars although I am sure some freedom groups will have something to say about this idea.
What about transporting valuable items? For these perhaps the need for delivery drivers will still be needed.
So I believe I have seen the future for driverless cars and it is not made by Google or Ford or Volvo it is the small 6 wheeler Starship robot that is currently living in Milton Keynes.
Driverless Cars will never take off 