Tech companies are known for showering their employees with sweet perks like free food. The thinking is: If employees can grab lunch on campus, they get back to work at their desks sooner.
Now, tiny self-driving robots have started delivering lunches and other supplies to tech workers in Silicon Valley's office parks, bringing convenience and flexibility to already-spoiled employees.
Starship Technologies, a robotics startup with headquarters in London, just announced its first large-scale deployment of autonomous delivery robots on corporate and academic campuses across the US and Europe. Robots have already started ferrying items from food to office supplies at Intuit in Mountain View, and the company plans to roll out 1,000 vehicles by the end of 2018.
Last year, we followed one of Starship's robots on its delivery shift. Here's how it works:
This is the delivery guy (or autonomous vehicle) of the future.
Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, cofounders of Starship Technologies and Skype before that, cut their teeth working on a robot that could collect rock samples on Mars and the moon.
They later used the same technology to develop an autonomous delivery robot. The startup raised $17 million in a funding round led by Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler in 2016.
Source: Business Insider
See the rest of the story at Business Insider