With the lockdown in the UK, grocery shopping became quite difficult. Those buying on the Web
could not find a delivery spots and there were extremely long queues at stores.
Thankfully, those in Milton Keynes could benefit from
another option. The Estonian company Starship offered a new system: delivery robots! As such, a small army
of approximately 80 of these machines could be seen roaming about the streets,
taking groceries to customers’ house. The best part is no human contact is
required. Designed like white cool boxes on wheels, they can travel
autonomously at a speed of 4 miles per hour to any location entered via a mobile
app. They are also equipped with speakers so that they can ‘talk’ to
customers if needed and they can climb up kerbs. Stairs cannot be tackled
though. When the robots come to their home, clients have to unlock the storage
compartments with their mobile phones to retrieve their order.
One of the supermarkets using these machines is Co-op. The
firm has been leveraging these systems since before the outbreak of the
pandemic. In fact, it was the first UK retailer to use the Starship
robots when they were being trialled in the area two years ago.
However, the coronavirus has dramatically accelerated adoption.
Co-op uses robots to deliver groceries
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