The self-driving robots, made by Starship Technologies, are funded by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis. They deliver on a simple A to B basis from a distribution point. They navigate by GPS. They look like bread ovens on six wheels. They’re about as threatening as your old teddy bear. They obey traffic laws, don’t run over people, and trundle along rather endearingly.
They can deliver anything, according to the Starship blurb. They’re a “vision of a future” according to The New York Times. The tech industry likes them, partly because they’re the working form of a long-held idea. The idea isn’t as kitschy as the publicity makes it seem, either. It’s a great, if under-evolved, idea with real benefits.
Commercially, they’ve signed up local distributors for their trial run in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. That’s a sign of faith in a risk averse sector, so that’s good news. Rather oddly, they don’t seem to have a name, like Roomba or something else that sticks to add cultural presence. How did marketing miss that very obvious issue?
The negatives – A short but sadly necessary encyclopedia of issues
Obviously, nothing can be that simple when it involves human beings. The negatives, and the reason societies can’t have nice things any more, are pretty lengthy. One thing you have to admit about these robots is that the idea is gutsy on a very unusual level. Anyone who’s prepared to risk their business on the honesty of human beings is either a saint or a person who’s long since stopped reading the news.
Starship emphasizes safety and security, but there are other ways of opening a robot than with a smart phone app. The question is whether any of these things will get to their destination. They’re also rather vulnerable. They can’t move fast enough to take evasive action. A kid on a bike or sprinting could easily catch them. It’s hard to imagine that the world’s criminals will see them rolling by and suddenly decide not to swipe whatever’s in them. It’s also difficult to see how in gun-mad America, they’d be expected to survive the welcoming Uzis, AKs, M4s, etc.
Uninsurable? Too risky? Too dangerous? A free lunch for anyone with a jemmy? In a sane world, they’d be safe. In the Global Psycho City Earth Anti-Society, they’re a potential liability. These negatives need to be tested, too, but they’re obvious and there are many of them.
The positives – Some real hope
The overall idea, in fact, is a very good idea. The robots are by definition cost-effective. They cost less than cars and vans to operate. They can navigate effectively. They’re not dangerous to humans. They reduce the fiddly grunt work for distributors. In an economy which is now basically a warehouse-to-client operation, they make good sense. They’re not much of a threat to van delivery jobs, which make more money out of bigger articles.
Modifications to these robots could also see them doing a lot of useful work as industrial handling robots for materials in any number of different types of locations. Inside a building, they could manage lot of handling jobs very easily. In big factories, they’d be invaluable as quick do-everything gophers for anything. The big cost benefit is cheap handling, and reducing away from the job time for human gophers.
Verdict — keep these robots in safe environments. Whoever came up with this idea doesn’t deserve the heartbreak of the negatives and the usual results of human stupidity. Fix those negatives, and get them on the road when the fixes are in place.
Note: Starship says “millions of packages are safely delivered every day”. Not by these robots, mate. How can they be delivering so many packages if they’re only now getting on the road? Fix that; may breach advertising laws and be construed as misleading.
