Just Eat robots deliver 1,000th meal in London
JUST Eat, whose website allows customers to order food from local takeaways which is then delivered by staff from the individual restaurants, has delivered more than 1,000 meals via its fleet of 10 robots in London.
The company began trialling the robots in December in the London boroughs of Greenwich and Southwark and they have been steadily rising in popularity.
One Chinese restaurant, Jasmine Garden, now uses two robots for local deliveries during peak times.
The robots, which are made by Starship Technologies, weigh 40lb (18kg) empty and can hold the equivalent of three shopping bags of food up to 22lb in weight. They use pavements to make their deliveries and travel at around 4-5mph. However, they can achieve a top speed of 10mph.
Its radar, nine cameras and ultrasonic sensors allow it to detect and avoid obstacles such as pedestrians, cars and cyclists.
A GPS system allows it to find the exact location to which it is delivering the order. The robots are likely to be in use this bank holiday weekend – the busiest period of the summer for takeaways.
Just Eat said that in the past three years, the August bank holiday had been its busiest 72-hour summer period with the website receiving more than 1,000 orders a minute at peak times.
Not only that, but the number of bank holiday Monday orders is typically 50pc higher than a normal Monday.
In spite of the robot delivery milestone, the number remains insignificant compared to the £49.5m UK orders the Just Eat website dealt with in the first six months of the year.
The company is without a chief executive until next month when Peter Plumb, the former boss of Moneysupermarket.com, joins the business.