Amazon's autonomous delivery robot will soon be seen in more US cities. Following a pilot near its headquarters in Seattle, the e-commerce giant is expanding robot delivery to Irvine, California.
The robot, named Amazon Scout, has been driving around Seattle just outside Amazon's headquarters for the past few months. There, Scout dodged all kinds of obstacles and also endured a wide variety of weather conditions. "From the expected rainstorm to the rare sunshine and even the biggest snowstorm the area has seen in the past decade," he said. Now it's time for Scout to experience some more sunshine," writes Sean Scott, vice-president of Amazon about the expansion to California.
Supervised by employee
Irvine is also undergoing a trial. The ordering process on Amazon.com remains the same for consumers. They will then have their package delivered to their home by an Amazon partner or by the Amazon Scout. The robot will initially be accompanied by an Amazon employee.
Robot in own development
Scout is being developed in Amazon's own hardware and software labs. This allows the company to move quickly. "Our labs allow engineers, scientists and our operations staff to quickly build and test the delivery devices. We don't have to wait for external parts or software updates; we can quickly prototype hardware components and write new code, and are able to validate our efforts in real time."
