Amazon Scout robots take to pavements in Washington State
From The BBC
24 January 2019
Amazon is experimenting with delivery robots, starting with a little truck called Scout which is taking to the pavements in Washington State. Six of the autonomous electric trucks will deliver parcels "at walking pace" round Snohomish County. The robots will only operate during the day and will be accompanied by an Amazon employee initially. It is the latest in a series of trials of pavement robots, seen as being a good alternative to road deliveries. "We developed Amazon Scout at our research and development lab in Seattle, ensuring the devices can safely and efficiently navigate around pets, pedestrians and anything else in their path," said Amazon vice-president Sean Scott on the company's blog. The truck is shown in a promotional video delivering a parcel, with a lid automatically lifting when the customer comes out of their house to retrieve the package. Details of how exactly this will work are not given. Neither is there any explanation for what happens if the customer is not in at the time of delivery.
Amazon will not be alone in making such deliveries. Robotics firm Starship Technologies has also just announced a fleet of two dozen autonomous robots that will deliver coffee and pizza to college students in Virginia. The robots can be requested via an app to deliver goods across the campus of George Mason University. San Francisco has had delivery robots on its streets for several years, with tech start-ups, including Marble and Starship, leading the way. But there has been something of a backlash, with some living there describing the robots as a menace and questioning how safe it was to share the pavements with them. In 2017, city supervisor Norman Yee introduced legislation to restrict their use, including capping the number of permits issued at three per company and requiring the delivery bots to only operate within certain neighbourhoods. They must also be accompanied by a human at all times.
[Now I can see something like this being useful in a University campus style environment. But out there on the street? Once they ditch the human supervisor (which I guess they will eventually) the Scouts and their cousins will probably be easy meat for opportunist thieves and a nightmare for law enforcement. I suppose that they could be restricted to safer (more wealthy) areas of any city but I doubt if it’ll be long before the first one is robbed, ‘kidnapped’ or hacked to deliver its cargo to another location where the hackers can empty it and drive off before anyone arrives – and then there’s the terrorist angle. Imagine one of those suckers filled with explosives rather than books….. ]
5 comments:
I wonder if any government has begun forced registration of drones and mobile units like that, so -- like an airplane, perhaps -- if one is mobile the local authorities know where it's going and who registered it. They'll probably expand too quickly for that approach to work well, though.
Possibly... but GPS spoofing is a reality now so... it should be easy to appear to be in one place whilst actually being miles away. Plus if there are hundreds or even thousands of these things doing their 'thing' you'll need something like air traffic control to monitor them all..... Nightmare!
Sounds and feels like a Philip K Dick story.
Judy: what's the one where the dog barks every morning at the same time (ROOF) and instead of the garbage man it turns out to be an alien? he was a great writer, imo... i've got most of his books...
@ Judy: Doesn't it just? I read a lot of PKD in my youth. Strange but interesting... Certainly made my younger brain ache a bit at times!
@ Mudpuddle: It's surprised how many of his books made it onto the big screen...
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