Human-in-the-loop delivery bots

Writing for Ars Technica, Timothy B. Lee shared his experience of getting a burger delivered by a robot. Part-self-driving and part-piloted, these box-on-wheels sidewalk robots by startups like Starship and Kiwibot are getting pretty clever. “If, like, a group of people surrounded the robot and blocked it,” said Starship executive Ryan Touhy, “the robot would identify the situation and say ‘Hello I’m a Starship delivery robot. Can you please let me pass.’” The whole story is a fun read, as is this comment. Also check out Joan Lääne’s post about their mapping and navigation tech for Starship’s blog.