Amazon has robots pulling stock from shelves and packing boxes to ship to customers. They are also experimenting with Prime robots (essentially, automated coolers on wheels) to get goods near your front door. Fedex and other delivery companies are doing similar experiments.
The problem is getting those goods those last few feet, from the road to your front door, overcoming obstacles like bikes and scooters, potted plants and, of course, navigating those pesky steps.
Enter Ford.
Instead of using wheeled carts, Ford’s Digit robot walks on two legs, mimicking a human approach to getting from the sidewalk to the front door. Digit also uses the Lidar and computing power of its partner self-driving car to map the path it should take to get to the door while avoiding obstacles.
Watch the video below and imagine a robot delivering your packages and mail. It’s coming.
Pass.
Unless they’re going to be armed, you can bet stupid people are going to make this not work. And there will be lots of dead innocent people too.
Think you can tell it not to prop the box against my screen door while sitting on the doormat, effectively barricading me in my house? If you can’t, they’d better armor it vs paintballs.
Will it be able to read the sign on my door that says to leave package on the enclosed front porch, then turn and open the door to the front porch and leave the package two steps up?