Self-driving delivery vehicle maker Dispatch picks up $2m in seed funding
Dispatch – one of the companies which is developing autonomous delivery vehicles – has picked up $2m in in seed financing led by Andreessen Horowitz. Dispatch is developing a delivery robot called “Carry” which will be able to travel on the pavement at human walking speed, carrying up to 50kg of parcels, groceries, laundry and other items.
Recipients will be able to unlock the vehicle’s compartments using smartphone apps.
Carry has “multiple” compartments, allowing it to complete several deliveries per trip.
The Dispatch team includes robotics and artificial intelligence experts from the US universities MIT, UPenn, Princeton, and Stanford.
In a notice posted on Wednesday (6 April) on its official blog, Dispatch said: “Today we’re thrilled to announce our seed round led by Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz, and joined by others including Charles Hudson from Precursor Ventures. This investment allows us to make key hires and grow our fleet of autonomous vehicles. We’re bringing together a great team with deep domain expertise in robotics, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence.”
Sources report that Dispatch has already been running test programmes for Carry vehicle. A few weeks ago, the company started pilot programmes at Menlo College and CSU Monterey Bay to deliver letters and packages to students.
Click here to view a video of Carry, posted on YouTube by Dispatch.
As previously reported, Starship Technologies, a start-up headed by former Skype co-founders, has also developed a self-driving delivery vehicle which is currently being put through its paces in the London borough of Greenwich. And in Australia, Domino’s recently unveiled a prototype pizza delivery robot.
Robots are not just the preserve of start-ups. Deutsche Post DHL Group (DPDHL Group) recently published a Trend Report on “Robots in Logistics” in which it argued that “robots are going to become essential in the world of logistics”. Yesterday (7 April), Clemens Beckmann, head of innovation at the DPDHL Group’s parcel and letter division, said in an interview with Reuters that “robots could be used in deliveries in three to five years’ time”.
The Reuters article speculated that the robots would probably look like “a table on wheels” that would follow the delivery workers, helping them to transport heavy parcels. It also reported that DPDHL Group was thinking about using robots as “mobile pick-up points” that would travel to customers to collect their parcels.
