Yandex, a Russian tech company working on self-driving systems, is partnering with GrubHub to deploy a fleet of delivery robots.
Autonomous robots will soon deliver food to students on college campuses in the United States.
The small six-wheeled autonomous robot — dubbed Yandex Rover — has started delivering orders from Yandex’s food delivery service.
As part of the initial testing phase, Yandex.Rover just started operating on the Yandex campus in Moscow, transporting small packages. While moving around its headquarters, the robot recognizes and safely navigates around pedestrians, pets, and any other obstacles.
Rover can reach its destination in fully autonomous mode, but currently it is being monitored for its activities with a remote operator.
Rover automating last-mile delivery for millions of Yandex users, presenting an efficient and economical way to deliver goods from relevant services throughout our ecosystem.
From food delivery through the Yandex.Eats platform and grocery orders from Yandex.Lavka, Rover will be able to provide users their meals and essentials sustainably and conveniently. Customers of our e-Commerce platform, Beru, may have their orders delivered by Yandex.
There’s great potential for the delivery robot to help millions of users who rely on the Yandex ecosystem to more easily navigate the online and offline world.
Yandex autonomous delivery robots can navigate pavements, pedestrian areas and crosswalks, and reach campus areas not accessible by car. Such functionality enables the robots to handle delivery tasks traditionally performed with human guidance and provides efficient last-mile logistics automation. Robotic delivery service offered by Yandex SDG is fully integrated into the Grubhub app and is quite easy. As the rover approaches its final destination, the diner will receive a push notification. Getting a meal is as simple as opening the rover’s hatch via the Grubhub app.
Yandex delivery robots are built on the same state-of-art self-driving technology stack as the company’s autonomous cars. They can operate in broad daylight and at night-time, in moderate snowfall and rain, as well as in controlled and uncontrolled pedestrian crossing scenarios. Since late 2020, Yandex rovers have been operating commercially in Russia, delivering thousands of orders from restaurants and grocery stores via the food delivery platform Yandex.Eats and the Yandex.Lavka express grocery delivery platform. Since April 2021, Yandex rovers have also been delivering orders from local restaurants in Ann Arbor, MI.