Starship Technologies’ robots to be used for food deliveries

Starship Technologies, created by the founders of Skype, has developed a six-wheeled autonomous robot that would deliver food for takeaway firms Just Eat and Pronto.

Just Eat is the world's leading online takeaway ordering service.

The zero emission robot, capable of traveling  at speeds of up to 4mph, would be able to deliver food to customers within a three-mile radius of the takeaway restaurant.

Customers receiving their meals via robot would be sent a code via text to open the robot and gain access to their food.

Just Eat chief product and technology officer Fernando Fanton said, ''We've always been committed to offering our customers new ways to order and pay for their food and now we're right at the heart of a new way of delivering food which is exciting for us as it will be for those who find a robot on their doorstep,'' www.standard.co.uk reported.

The robots have already been tested in south east London to deliver food to 400,000 people without a single accident, Starship Technologies said.

According to Starship Technologies founder Ahti Heinla, the partnerships with Just Eat and Pronto formed part of the next phase of their development in running real robotic delivery services.

Starship Technologies said it would deploy its first fleet of delivery bots in London and three other European cities this month on behalf of a few companies. The robots can hold about two shopping bags' worth of food or other goods.

Though the six-wheeled bots can negotiate curbs and rocks, they are not intended for cross-country travel. Rather they would be used for what the company called the "last mile" industry, meaning the final leg of a package's trip from a delivery hub to the recipient's doorstep.

According to the Skype co-founders Heinla and Janus Friis, the company's goal was to get cost of on-demand delivery down to about $1 per package, from the  current level of about $15 in London.