Getting deliveries from a truck to your front door might soon involve a robot dog.
Robotics company Boston Dynamics is testing Spot, its canine-shaped robot, as a delivery worker that can ride along in trucks and hop out to leave packages at customers' doorsteps.
The delivery-focused version of Spot includes a conveyor belt. A video posted by the company on Tuesday shows a human worker placing packages on the conveyor belt, followed by Spot walking up to houses and rotating the belt to set them down.
Robots are already carrying some deliveries most of the way to their destinations. Spot, though, is meant to tackle the last few feet of those deliveries — the "porch gap," as Boston Dynamics calls it.
"So much of logistics is already automated, but we believe that the final frontier of logistics automation is that last 50 feet," Marco da Silva, vice president and general manager for Spot at Boston Dynamics, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Boston Dynamics said it's in talks with major logistics companies to test Spot for making deliveries. The robot has previously been used for other applications, from security to site inspections, Boston Dynamics said.
Loading deliveries into autonomous delivery vehicles and getting them from curbs to doorsteps are challenging, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said last year. It's one aspect of the delivery that human workers can navigate more easily than robots can, Xu said.
DoorDash has been using Dot, its autonomous delivery robot, for some deliveries in Arizona. The stroller-sized robot is small enough to fit through doorframes and travel on surfaces where full-sized cars can't — an advantage for picking up and delivering items directly to customers' doors, DoorDash has said.
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Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.
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