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New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

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Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#21

Post by pvnick »

jedberg wrote: post #17

I almost tripped over one of these last week! Then I stared at it as it rolled away, wondering if they were being remote controlled or had some basic AI and pathfinding. Sounds like a little of both. I think it's a great start, but the clearly have a lot of work to do. They should start by adding a pole and flag so you can see it coming. :)

Completely unrelated, but thank you for posting the chicken papricash recipe on your website. Sounds really good. Just printed it out, am planning to try it.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#22

Post by seibelj »

jedberg wrote: post #17

I almost tripped over one of these last week! Then I stared at it as it rolled away, wondering if they were being remote controlled or had some basic AI and pathfinding. Sounds like a little of both. I think it's a great start, but the clearly have a lot of work to do. They should start by adding a pole and flag so you can see it coming. :)

I think this company is underestimating the slip-and-fall lawsuit people. They must be salivating at the autonomous robots.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#23

Post by paulgb »

vecplane wrote: post #12
giarc wrote: post #8

Wow - that site is terrible. On initial load I have 3 ads (left side, right side and bottom) that take up 10% of screen each, cover the content and other ads, and scroll with me. http://imgur.com/a/TKJNC

I definitely recommend uBlock Origin - https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

I recently switched to JavaScript by whitelist only and now I won't go back. I always thought disabling JavaScript was just for tinfoil-hat luddites, but now I realize how often JavaScript detracts from the experience and how little it enhances it. Speed-wise, it reminds me of going from 56k to DSL back in the day.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#24

Post by gene-h »

heinrichf wrote: post #2

Website: http://www.kiwicampus.com/home From https://angel.co/kiwicampus : "Current self driving algorithms require huge amounts of data to be trained with, so our robots are initially being controlled from Colombia." (not affiliated, I just found these DIY-like robots very fun)

" so our robots are initially being controlled from Colombia." There was a sci-fi movie about that[0]. In short a wall gets built between the US and Mexico, and telerobots controlled by workers in Mexico start being used for the jobs normally performed by migrant workers.

That being said there are some interesting legal issues with telerobots. Currently, most laws we have presume the person performing the crime is physically present. For example, in the unlikely event that one of these robots injures someone or causes property damage who exactly is held liable?

Another interesting case is if an evil set of Berkeley engineering students in desperate need of robot parts for a project, pays the driver of one of these robots to disable tracking and drive it to a secret robot chop-shop. Supposedly, the penalties for the evil Berkely engineering students can be less than if they went out and kidnapped the robot, because the company allowed and trusted the worker with access to the robot.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#25

Post by jedberg »

pvnick wrote: post #21
jedberg wrote: post #17

I almost tripped over one of these last week! Then I stared at it as it rolled away, wondering if they were being remote controlled or had some basic AI and pathfinding. Sounds like a little of both. I think it's a great start, but the clearly have a lot of work to do. They should start by adding a pole and flag so you can see it coming. :)

Completely unrelated, but thank you for posting the chicken papricash recipe on your website. Sounds really good. Just printed it out, am planning to try it.

You're welcome. :) Not sure I wrote it on there, but you can substitute plain yogurt for the sour cream for a smoother taste. Also, my brother sometimes adds a little powered sugar right before blending for extra sweetness.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#26

Post by jonahx »

Animats wrote: post #20

Redwood City has Starship Technologies robots doing Doordash deliveries in the downtown area. Those look more like a finished product. They're mostly autonomous but can be controlled over a cell phone link if necessary. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y3-AmqVg5E

There is something unsettling about the prospect of fleets of bomb-defusing robots wheeling around pedestrian sidewalks on their unknown delivery missions.

If these become ubiquitous, they'd also provide a ready cloak for anyone wishing to detonate a bomb without any link to the crime or chance of harming themselves.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#27

Post by pvnick »

jedberg wrote: post #25
pvnick wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely unrelated, but thank you for posting the chicken papricash recipe on your website. Sounds really good. Just printed it out, am planning to try it.

You're welcome. :) Not sure I wrote it on there, but you can substitute plain yogurt for the sour cream for a smoother taste. Also, my brother sometimes adds a little powered sugar right before blending for extra sweetness.

Good to know, thanks

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#28

Post by dheera »

plorkyeran wrote: post #9
mattpavelle wrote: post #3

This is interesting, but these robots move slowly - or at least not as fast as a car. I don't see food from outside a mile or 2 km range being deliverable in any reasonable amount of time. Is this the food-delivery equivalent of the last mile (kilometer) problem? Because with delivery the rest of the miles are also important...

I live in Berkeley in one of the areas that they're testing these and there's 20+ restaurants that do take-out within a mile of me, so that part isn't a big issue. Even a mile could be a 30 minute round trip though, as they run on sidewalks and so inherently can't really go much faster than walking speed, and that's not very many deliveries per hour per robot.

Autonomous robots are far cheaper than humans to operate and could more easily parallelize the task of doing multiple deliveries per hour. In addition, the markets will expand significantly when the price of food delivery comes down to $1-2. Also, car-driven food deliveries also only average about 2 per hour, in part because of parking issues on both restaurant and customer end.

(disclaimer: I am a co-founder of one of their competitors -- robby.io -- we're based in Palo Alto/Stanford)

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#29

Post by xkcd-sucks »

jedberg wrote: post #17

I almost tripped over one of these last week! Then I stared at it as it rolled away, wondering if they were being remote controlled or had some basic AI and pathfinding. Sounds like a little of both. I think it's a great start, but the clearly have a lot of work to do. They should start by adding a pole and flag so you can see it coming. :)

At a different delivery robot company, some of their positioning hardware doesn't work all that well in practice, and each robot is followed (on foot) by a 'robot minder' that corrects its course using a videogame controller if necessary.

Regardless, it's probably cheaper to outsource driving via remote control than to employ domestic delivery drivers... or building robust self-driving vehicles

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#30

Post by anon4this1 »

This reminds me of hearing Reed Hastings of netflix talking about starting the DVD mail-rental business as preparation for when streaming became technologically viable. They knew that internet delivery would eventually work, but to be the big first mover they needed to establish a customer base. As soon as broadband reached a level where streaming video is viable, they convert the customer base over to it.

Likewise, robot street delivery is going to be huge. The marginal cost of delivery will tend towards zero, and its really useful. If a company spends years and zillions of dollars messing around with AI and machine learning bullshit to power these, they will miss the boat. The goal of a successful company should be:

- Get as much VC as possible

- Spend it on low cost chinese built bareboned GSM controlled bots

- Hire warehouses full of vietnamese computer gamers to control them

- Get more VC

Once you have a market cap of billions, THEN you get a lab of engineers together to make them increasingly autonomous

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