| Starship Robots Reach 1 Million Milestone |
| Written by Lucy Black |
| Tuesday, 02 February 2021 |
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Autonomous delivery vehicles passed an important milestone in January 2020. Starship, one of the first delivery bots to appear on our sidewalks, made its 1 millionth delivery on the campus of Bowling Green State University, Ohio. Sharing this news, Starhip's co-founder Ahti Heinla wrote: I’m proud to announce we have reached one million autonomous deliveries, more than 6 years after founding the company in 2014. We believe no other company in the world has completed this many autonomous deliveries — including self-driving taxi rides. His post also contained some fun facts, such as the huge number (105,000) of bottles of milk delivered as well as the prevalence of pizzas and bananas!
The company was founded in July 2014 by two Skype co-founders, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, with Lex Bayer joining as CEO in June 2018 from Airbnb. In a previous blog Heinla set out Starship's aims and accounted for the exponential growth seen in the chart during 2020: We set out to build Starship in 2014 with the mission to improve everyday life by revolutionizing delivery. Six years later, Covid-19 has radically elevated the importance of this mission, as we’ve moved from offering a convenient service to an essential one.This year has seen demand for contactless delivery grow exponentially around the world. In the midst of a crisis with a huge human cost, one of our priorities has been to ensure that people who can’t leave their homes get the groceries they need, when they need them. Longer-term, we believe contactless delivery will become a permanent part of everyday life for millions, as people embrace the advantages of flexible working and businesses realise the benefits of efficient last-mile delivery.
Starship isn't only the delivery robot company engaged bringing about transformative change in last-mile deliveries. This video from 2019 looks at the six leaders in this field, starting with Starship and also featuring the look-a-like Amazon Scout. The final competitor included in this line up, the FedEx SameDay Bot, which is now also known as Roxo, is still in its testing phase and is preparing for a role in the delivery of Covid vaccine under cold temperature conditions across Asia Pacific. The need for contactless deliveries is currently accelerating the demand for robot delivery but when you consider the benefits of reduced carbon emissions as well, this is a transformative technology that is here to stay. |
| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 February 2021 ) |
