Your Delivery Robot Is Here

0:00Aarian Marshall:Hey, Louise. How are you doing? Hey, Michael. I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well, thanks. Thanks for being here this week. Filling in for Lauren. Yeah, Lauren is on a really exciting trip to Arizona that I'm sure we'll hear more about soon. So as her editor, I am happy to fill in when she's off on an adventure. All right. Well, today we're going to be talking about something that you know a little bit about, robots and delivery apps. It's also an intersection that Wired's Arian Marshall has been following closely for years. So please welcome back to the show, Arian. Hi. Hello. Given today's topic, I'm curious to know, what is the most unexpected thing you've both ordered through a delivery app?

0:43So I was on a press trip to China recently, and I was taking notes during an interview, and I got pen all over my white pants. So I ordered like the Chinese equivalent of a Tide pen. I think that's probably the weirdest thing I've ever gotten, you know, on demand. I am so constitutionally against just paying for delivery. Even before there were apps, I hated paying delivery people. Much respect what they do, but I'd rather spend my money in anyways. So I think recently I got really desperate and ordered like Pad Thai and that was wild for me. So that's where I am.

1:18Aarian Marshall:That's your most unexpected thing? Yeah. The fact that I used it at all is unexpected. Yeah. I mean, I live in one of the most population-dense parts of the West Coast of California, and I rarely use delivery apps, but I would say probably the most unexpected thing I've ever ordered is a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey. Respect.

1:41Aarian Marshall:This is Wired's Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today we're talking about how, after years of struggles, delivery app companies are still trying to deploy their robots right to your doorstep. At an event earlier this week, DoorDash unveiled its own new autonomous robot called Dot. The company says it's part of a goal to have a hybrid, quote, work model for deliveries going forward, working with humans, but also drones and autonomous vehicles in the mix. But DoorDash is not alone in its efforts to have your dinner delivered by a robot. But the industry of autonomous deliveries has been steadily evolving and has faced considerable challenges along the way.

2:24Aarian Marshall:We'll dive into why some of these companies are still betting big on delivery robots, the race to create the right technology to use in them, and what having these robot fleets in our cities could mean for all of us. I'm Michael Kolori, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture. I'm Louise Matsakis, Senior Business Editor. And I'm Ariane Marshall, a staff writer covering cities and transportation. So, Arianne, you attended this event this week hosted by DoorDash where the company unveiled their new robot. Its name is Dot. Tell us all about it. Yeah, so I attended this event virtually. My colleague, Boone Ashworth, actually went in person to the event in San Francisco.

3:08And we knew there was going to be some kind of robot. But I was really struck by how cute Dot is, but also how big Dot is. So most delivery robots you see out in the world today, there are some, there aren't a ton, are pretty small. They usually come up to, you know, maybe an adult human's knees, maybe a little bit taller. This one's almost five feet tall. It's covered in cameras. It has nine cameras and seven other sensors on it. It is bright red. It has these big pixelated eyes. and to get into the delicious DoorDash stuff inside. Its mouth opens kind of like a Pac-Man. It also, in the promotional videos, had this kind of Wally-like voice that talked to consumers.

3:55So altogether, a very cute thing. We did come away with some questions about how this thing was going to operate in the real world. DoorDash said it's going to be on sidewalks, it's going to be on roads, and it's also going to be on bike lanes. And that's a really complicated challenge for an autonomous vehicle to have to handle all of those things at once, all of the different kinds of stuff you see in all of those different places. So it's going to be interesting to watch going forward. So I'm particularly obsessed with one detail, which is that Boone gave Dot a little kick to, you know, see how the robot would react.

4:28Can you talk about that? Because, you know, you mentioned bike lanes, you mentioned all these obstacles. But what about the threat of people? Is that part of the reason that DoorDash decided to give it these cute details so that maybe people would be less likely to kick it the way that Boone did? Definitely. There is like a whole bunch of researchers who focus on how to make robots more palatable to humans. Something I ended up talking to experts about for the story and didn't make it in were some of the technologies that it's not necessarily that DOT does, but other robots do to kind of protect themselves.

5:03Someone told me that Starship Technologies, which is another leader in this space, has actually trained its robots to stay away from children because children like to mess with these robots. And they've trained them to, if there's an adult present, to go stand by the adult because adults are safer than children. So it's something that these companies are definitely thinking about, how to make sure that their robots stay safe in this big, complicated world we live in. And it turns out one of those ways is to stay away from kids.

5:32Aarian Marshall:Also, they should just not deploy them in Philadelphia. Yes, another good tip. So Dot is not DoorDash's first robot, right? Earlier this year, the company announced a partnership with Coco Robotics. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. So Coco is a LA-based company. Right now, they're deployed in a handful of cities, including the west side of Los Angeles. And they have this kind of smaller, more traditional sidewalk robots. And they are operating, you know, you really do see them kind of all over certain neighborhoods in L.A. They just kind of hang out on corners. They are out delivering food. So they are out and about and they are partnered with DoorDash.

6:14And they have been for a few months now.

6:16Aarian Marshall:But DOT is the creation of DoorDash Labs, which is like a wing of the company that works on automation and robotics. So why is DoorDash sort of trying to approach this from two angles? Yeah, it's a good question. The first thing that DoorDash told me is that they have data from millions and millions and millions of deliveries, and they think that that data is going to help them run the best sort of robotics service that can be run. But the other thing is they're really in control of the whole thing, and they like that idea. And I also think that part of it is that DoorDash, like so many other companies in tech and in Silicon Valley, are really trying to promote how thoughtful they are being about artificial intelligence and robotics.

6:55And by running their own robotics company, they can show investors and then probably also potential employees that they are really serious about the buzziest things in tech right now. I have a question for you about these robots. When the Coco robots first were deployed in LA, I live on the west side of LA, so I've seen them everywhere, actually. I looked it up and it seemed like they were still mostly being remote controlled by contractors. So like instead of a delivery person, it was just somebody in an office building somewhere who was basically playing a video game. And has the technology progressed a lot since then?

7:32Or like how advanced is the tech really? And is that part of the reason that DoorDash wants to go in-house now that we've gotten to the point where like they're much closer to being fully autonomous? Yeah, it's a great question and one that is not entirely transparent. All right. I will say that Coco in particular, I'm hopefully going to make my way to L.A. in the next few months to actually hang out with their teleoperations team, which is the team that theoretically helps the robots behind the scenes get around. And what Coco was told me specifically is that they do have a lot of their robots driving more autonomously than they have been in the past.

8:06There's still people there kind of sitting behind screens, seeing what the robot sees and intervening when the robot gets in trouble. We don't know how many times that happens, but it does seem like the technology has gotten better than it was a few years ago. Now, I think there's a big difference between that and what you see a company like Waymo doing. Those autonomous vehicles are out on the roads, and they are the vast majority of the time really driving autonomously. So there are a bunch of strides happening in autonomy right now, and that's really exciting. The other thing about Waymo is that they have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars in this over the years.

8:40is DoorDash willing to spend that amount of money to get like a perfectly operating robot that is truly autonomous? I think that's an open question. They wouldn't tell me how much they're actually investing in this right now, which I thought was interesting. So I do think it's an interesting time to jump in. But if they're going to jump in, they're going to have to spend a lot of money to get there.

8:58Aarian Marshall:It's an interesting time for them to jump in just because like the excitement around delivery robots really feels like it was at its peak right before the pandemic and in the first couple months of the COVID pandemic. So like 2018, 2019, and the first part of 2020. And then it really cooled off. And I'm just wondering if there are other companies that we can sort of point to that have kept the torch burning or companies that have faced speed bumps and then decided to pull over. Yeah, so the pandemic was really a high point for enthusiasm about these robots because people were scared of contact with other people.

9:34So it was like, well, let's let robots do the delivery and we won't put delivery people at risk. So you saw Amazon, you saw FedEx investing a lot of money in these things, a few other companies. Postmates started a company called Serve Robotics that's still around. It's now a spinoff on its own. And then over the years, you saw them back off a bit. Amazon abandoned that project. So did FedEx. And it sort of fell out of favor. And I think that's partly because this is such a complicated technical problem to create a robot that can operate in so many different contexts. And roads are complicated, but they have very specific rules.

10:13Sidewalks, not so much. People don't have to put on their turn signals. People don't have to follow specific lines or walk in a straight line. And people also, you know, some of them are in wheelchairs. Some use mobility aids. There's just a huge variety of things you see on the sidewalks. It's just a difficult problem. So we've seen less investment and less enthusiasm for sidewalk robots over the past few years. But they're still around. And there's still, we saw Sam Altman invested a bunch of money in Cocoa Robotics earlier this year. So there's, you know, it's happening. It's just smaller than it was.

10:48Yeah, I've certainly seen a lot of videos of these delivery robots getting into all sorts of unexpected jams. I noticed here in LA that often the, like, tree roots totally disturb the sidewalk. So, like, there's almost mini mountains that the Cocoa Robots have to get over. And I'm always afraid that they're just going to, like, totally face plant. So how realistic is it that we're actually going to be able to overcome all of these obstacles? Yeah, I'd say it comes down to, and this is the thing I always say about autonomous vehicles, it's not when, it's where. So I think it's possible to build a robot that can deal with specific contexts.

11:27For example, DoorDash says they want to operate in the suburbs. And part of the reason is because the sidewalks there can be wider, though not always. They sometimes have bike lanes. And they think this is a less complicated place. So if you keep kind of limiting the amount of space where these have to operate, they can actually get pretty good at it. Coco, for example, has told me that in L.A., they know, you know, to your example, Louise, like they know that this corner has that crazy tree root. And they know that they have to pay attention to that, both in terms of like the data collecting and also, you know, when the humans have to intervene.

12:01So they're like, OK, the robot is coming to this corner with the crazy tree root. You know, maybe that's a solution for the future. How much does that cost? Does that actually save you money in terms of labor, which is theoretically the point of these robots? I'm not sure. I'd be interested to know.

12:18Aarian Marshall:I mean, it makes sense then that a lot of the action that we're seeing in delivery robots right now is on college campuses. Because if you think about the layout of a college campus, you basically can roll a robot anywhere on wide paths that are well paved, well lit, areas that are like blocked off for pedestrians only at all times. And it just seems like it would be a good testing ground for this technology because it doesn't have a lot of the same complex infrastructure that like a city sidewalk does, especially in an area that is dense enough for you to be able to drive food around to people and still make money doing it.

12:59Yeah, it's a great point. And that's actually the strategy we see from a company called Starship Technologies, which is Estonian. I'd say they're probably the biggest company in this space right now that's stuck around. And they're really going after university campuses. As you say, Mike, they're like better maintained in terms of sidewalks. People are often friendlier. And from the kind of business perspective, the college students at 2 a.m., you know, maybe you're coming back from whatever you've been doing and you're a little bit less price sensitive about how much that pizza costs or how much that burrito costs and delivery is looking like a really good option for you.

13:36So it might be kind of the ideal market for this sort of thing.

13:41Aarian Marshall:all right well we need to take a break but when we come back we're going to dive further into what robots like dot might mean for us living in cities whether we are ordering in or not so stay with us 150 years ago they were hunting us down to kill us and now they're hunting down immigrants to deport them. This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment. Listen to First America wherever you get your podcasts.

14:30Aarian Marshall:Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. Today we are talking about all of the delivery robots and renewed interest in them across the industry. Now, Arian, I have to say something that caught my attention from your reporting was this one detail that immediately made me internally grown a bit. The fact that DOT is trained to also use bike lanes. And this might seem like a minor thing, but for me and for many, many other people, it actually opens up a whole can of worms. We have somewhat good bike infrastructure in San Francisco, where I live. I know it's a little less nice in other cities where these robots are rolling out, particularly places like Phoenix, which has almost no good bike infrastructure outside of the city center.

15:14Aarian Marshall:But the bike lanes have already become quite crowded with not only bikes, but e-bikes and cargo bikes and delivery bikes and two-wheeled scooters, which is great because it gets people out of cars when you have a crowded bike lane, but it's also bad because now people feel like they have the right or are allowed to drive a five-foot-tall robot in the bike lane. As somebody who covers transportation closely and as somebody who lives in a city, I'm curious what you make of all this. Yeah, I agree, Mike. It's something that definitely gives me pause. And as you pointed out, this is not the first time we've seen private companies kind of try to infringe on that very limited bike lane space.

16:00We've seen companies like Amazon and DHL experiment with using smaller, but still kind of big bikes to deliver packages. And it's like, okay, that's cool. As you say, it takes people out of cars, but that also takes up space that commuters might be using, might make it harder for more nervous cyclists. So I think it's a great point. DoorDash is not the first company to experiment with bike lanes and robots. There's a company out of Ann Arbor that's a few years old that's still smaller than it used to be, but still sticking around. So this has been happening for a little bit. I'll also point out that it's also kind of complicated when it comes to regulations.

16:40During the height of the sidewalk robot craze, we saw Amazon actually going from state to state, and we broke the news on this, Amazon going from state to state, lobbying state legislatures to change their definitions of vehicles to allow these robots to operate on sidewalks. Now, that doesn't happen everywhere. And there are also regulations in a lot of places that determine who's allowed to operate in bike lanes as well. We've seen, for example, in a bunch of cities that e-bikes are technically banned from bike lanes. So it's going to get complicated if these companies really want to operate these delivery robots in bike lanes all over the world.

17:16They're going to have to talk to a lot of politicians, which I know is their favorite thing. Man, I find this lame. I feel like we barely have the bike lanes for bikes in many parts of the country. And the idea of now having to compete with robots kind of sucks. But if it means more bike lanes, I'm sort of for it. I'd rather have the tech companies on the side of wanting to build more bike lanes than perhaps less of them for their autonomous cars. So I don't know. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yeah, definitely.

17:46Aarian Marshall:I think it would be hilarious if the law of induced demand came to bike lanes and we just started adding a third and a fourth bike lane in every place where there's already one. That would be great, honestly. More bike lanes is sort of my bottom line here. Fully. Well, okay, so that's the transportation front, but we should also talk about the labor front because the United States is home to the largest food delivery market behind China. We use food delivery apps a lot, and many tens and hundreds of thousands of people make their living from food delivery as contracted delivery people. So for all of the talk of AI coming to take our jobs, it seems like we're nearing an inflection point with more robots and drones becoming more capable.

18:28Aarian Marshall:So my question to both of you is, do you think that this hybrid universe that companies like DoorDash are trying to build, that robots will outnumber delivery people? Will there be a balance? What will that look like? I find it hard right this moment to envision a world in which there are more robots than human delivery people, just because when people pay the extra money to have someone bring their food to their house, and it is extra money, I think what a lot of people want is that food to show up at their door. And that might mean going up a few steps. It might mean buzzing through the gated community, entering a code.

19:05And these are all things that are really hard for robots, but really, really easy for humans. It doesn't take much for humans to do that. So really getting robots to that level of proficiency is going to take a ton of investment, and I'm just not sure that's worth it. But Louise, I'm interested to hear about the experience in China, which I know is different from here. So the interesting thing about China is that sometimes there is a robot portion of the journey and then a human part of the journey, And where you often see this is in hotels. So if you order food to your hotel room, usually the delivery worker will drop it off with the robot.

19:45And then all the robot does is get into the elevator and get off at your floor and go to your room, right? That's a really simple, predictable journey. And then you open your hotel room and there's the robot with the boba you ordered or whatever. But that hasn't changed the fundamental labor dynamic, right, which is that what's happening is that that delivery worker can now do more deliveries, right, because they don't have to go all the way up to the room. It's not that that demand for their labor overall has actually been reduced. Delivery workers are still an incredibly large share of the overall working population in China.

20:25And I don't see that changing for exactly the reasons that you described, Aaron. People want their food delivered to them right away. They want it to be really fast. And the chaotic streets of a city like Shanghai are just really hard for an autonomous robot to navigate at this point.

20:45Aarian Marshall:So that really is a true hybrid model. And I like that. But I don't live in a hotel. For sure. Yeah. It happens in some residential complexes. as well, but it's just the same like really quick route in the elevator. That reminds me, Louise, of something someone told me while I was reporting out this article, which is these two researchers at Carnegie Mellon followed around this sidewalk robot test in Pittsburgh for a few weeks. And they found that a lot of the human labor of delivering was actually just displaced onto other workers. So for example, someone had to clean out the robot when things spilled and someone had to, you know, make sure it was all in the right slots.

21:30And then, as we said, someone had to come out to the curb and get the food. So it might not mean there's less work. It's just work in different places or more work for other people. Yeah, I think that that's an incredibly good point. It's often about modifying the labor rather than eliminating it.

21:52Aarian Marshall:All right, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll come right back with recommendations.

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