The renowned tech and retail company that is Amazon have once again looked to push the boundaries when it comes to your online shopping experience, however, this time they are looking to robots to make the difference.
Specifically, the company's online market place is looking to implement an automatic robot delivery service in order to avoid using up road space, instead, the 6-wheeled robot will take to the pavements of Washington State, initially while being monitored by an Amazon employee, but the aim is to have them delivering parcels completely independently in the near future.
As for where the tech is now, the device is said to be fully comfortable at avoiding and managing routes that may have pets, people or any other obstacles on. Interestingly, Amazon's vice-president, Sean Scott, had this to say regarding the venture: "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."
However, there has been some friction to the idea as in 2017, city supervisor Norman Yee introduced legislation to restrict the company using them, in fact, this included capping the number robots to three per company and requiring the delivery bots to only operate within certain neighbourhoods while always being accompanied by a human. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens from here.
