Michigan Company Experiments With Autonomous Food-Delivery Robots To Compete With Grubhub, Doordash

Michigan company Refraction AI will test autonomous food-delivery robots called REV in January. The REV robots will serve four restaurants in the small city of Ann Arbor, where Refraction AI has its headquarters.

The machines weigh 100 pounds and will make deliveries to 300 customers in their trial run. The service could deliver food to customers at half the price of food delivery companies such as Grubhub and Doordash.

Refraction hopes to then expand to other areas such as Boston and Madison, Wisconsin. “Our biggest focus is dense, urban areas. At (these) speeds, it’s a safe proposition,” Refraction CEO Matthew Johnson-Robertson said. The company would make deliveries with a phone app.

Major companies have been experimenting with autonomous robots for deliveries, whether it be for food or for other items.

Uber said earlier this year that the company was experimenting with autonomous drones that could deliver McDonald’s Big Macs, doing a test run of the service in San Diego.

E-commerce giant Amazon is also trying to deliver packages by autonomous drone, with the machines capable of delivering packages of under five pounds in 30 minutes or less. UPS has also been delivering medical supplies by drone, after the company gained full approval for a drone delivery airline from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).