A in Dubai will soon be expanding operations to other areas after the success of Yango Technology's pilot. The company rolled out its pilot project in Shobha Hartland last month and has seen encouraging results.

 “Over 40 per cent of people who were ordering selected the robot for delivery, when they see that it is an option,” said Nikita Gavrilov, regional head of Yango Tech Autonomy, Middle East.

“They want to see this fully electric, innovative thing come to their building door in 20 minutes, delivering their food and groceries. It is very exciting.”

The company began the pilot in partnership with food tech and retail company Roots, and Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) to deliver orders within a 2km radius in under 30 minutes. According to Nikita, the robot has been very efficient.

“We see that our delivery timings now are amazing; it's less than 20 minutes from when the order was created to when the customer takes the deliveries out of the box,” he said. “The stability of the system is great because the , fully charged.”

Easy to implement

He said that the company has been teaching staff how to interact with robots. “In the last one month, our partner Roots has not faced any significant difficulties,” he said. “They have told me that it is so easy, just like working with any other platform. They create an order, the robot arrives, they press a button to open the lid, put the order in there and off it goes. So it is easy to implement.”

The pod, that has a capacity of 60 litres, can climb curbs up to 10cm high and is and “give way to pedestrians” as they make their deliveries.

“We can put about 12 bottles of 1.5 liters of water in the box,” he said. “It can also sense when people are moving in front of or behind it. Sometimes we have children running after the robot because they are excited. It can sense the movement and stop to avoid accidents.”

Currently there are two robots plying the community for the deliveries. Once a customer places an order, the robot picks up the delivery and traverses the area, using sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. When it gets to the delivery location, the customer gets a Whatsapp message signaling the robot has arrived and has to meet it at the entrance and pick up the goods.

Although he did not reveal more about the expansion plans, Nikita said there was huge potential for the delivery system to be implemented, especially in villa communities. “As robots cannot climb the stairs and do not take the lift, the delivery is done to the door entrance of the building,” he said. “In this scenario, delivering to villas will be a key for us to scale the operation and hopefully we will be exploring them more.

He added that the challenges he foresees are getting more companies to adopt the method of delivery. “Some businesses here at the conference see the robot and think that these technologies are very difficult to implement into their business processes and operations,” he said. “But it is not really and I hope more companies will see that.”