Russia’s Yandex agreed to a multi-year partnership with GrubHub to deliver food to US college students. Yandex’s driverless robots will be delivering the food. The testing of Yandex’s autonomous robots started in 2019 and already operates at certain locations. Central Moscow and Ann Arbor, Michigan are two places that already saw these delivery robots.
CEO of Yandex Self-Driving Group, Dmitry Polishchuk said, “We are delighted to deploy dozens of our rovers, taking the next step in actively commercializing our self-driving technology in different markets across the globe,”
These robots work on cameras, LiDAR technology, and cameras. Autonomous vehicle runs on knowing the nearby vehicle speed then evaluate its own speed. It can identify different objects like trees or obstacles easily.
Polishchuk posted over Medium, “In the last few years we’ve been seeing a constant growth in demand for delivery services and the events of 2020 have only advanced this trend. This is why now we have robots coming to people’s rescue. They will take on part of the delivery load which will allow us to retain delivery speed as the demand for our services grows. Rovers can deliver restaurant meals, groceries, orders from online stores and will slowly but steadily become a normal part of city life.”
Partnership with GrubHub
In partnership with GrubHub, Yandex will offer its services to college students. This autumn select colleges will have driverless food delivery in the US. There are about 250 college campuses in the country.
Vice president of corporate and campus partners at GrubHub, Brian Madigan said, “While college campuses are notoriously difficult for cars to navigate, specifically as it relates to food delivery, Yandex robots easily access parts of campuses that vehicles cannot — effectively removing major hurdle universities face when implementing new technology,”
Yandex already developed self-driving cars, the same technology is being used for driverless robots. In June 2020, Yandex unveiled a self-driving car in partnership with Hyundai. CEO of Yandex says that there is still a lot to be done. Their team has been working on the technology since 2017. He said, “We’ve been developing technology that can be applied to various types of vehicles and suitable for different road, traffic, and weather conditions around the world.”
Driverless technology is being developed at a faster pace, as they are being tested and implemented simultaneously. Yandex is working on both self-driving cars and driverless food delivery systems. Where both technologies is similar.