DELIVERY ON WHEELS

Robots used to ship goods

The next time you order food for delivery, don’t be surprised if it’s brought to your door by a small sixwheeled robot.

London-listed Just Eat Plc will join German retail chain Metro AG, logistics company Hermes Group and U.K. food delivery startup Pronto Technology Ltd. in a trial using self-driving delivery robots. Starship Technologies, the company that makes the droids, said Wednesday that Just Eat and Pronto will be using the robots in London, while Metro and Hermes will deploy them in Duesseldorf, Germany, and Bern, Switzerland, as well as another undisclosed German city.

Created by two Skype co-founders, Starship, which is headquartered in London and has its engineering research and development office in Tallinn, Estonia, has been testing its robots in 12 countries over the past nine months. This will be the first time businesses will be using the technology to deliver real orders to paying customers.

Allan Martinson, Starship’s chief operating officer, said in a telephone interview that each business’s trial will involve a fleet of between five to 10 robots in one or two areas of each city. He said Starship would likely announce further customers, including some in the U.S., within months.

The little robots, which are designed to operate on sidewalks rather than roads, make deliveries within a three- to five-kilometre radius. They can carry loads weighing as much as nine kilograms, at speeds of up to six kilometres per hour.

Starship will operate the robots on behalf of the first customers, monitoring their progress remotely and standing by to drive the vehicles remotely if they encounter situations they can’t handle in autonomous driving mode. During test driving, the robots have encountered more than 400,000 people without having a single accident, the company said.

Ahti Heinla, one of Starship’s co-founders as well as its CEO and chief technology officer, said in a statement that these pilot programs with customers were “the next phase” of the robot delivery company’s development. “We will now develop know-how on running real robotic delivery services,” he said.

“We are continuously looking for ways to use technology to make our customers’ lives easier,” Just Eat chief executive David Buttress said.

PHOTOS: PETI KOLLANYI/BLOOMBERG A prototype self-driving parcel delivery robot, developed by Starship Technologies, travels across a cobblestone square during testing in the city centre in Tallinn, Estonia. Top right, an engineer loads parcels before the test run.