That’s right, a robot dog that delivers your orders to your home or office door was the proposal during CES 2019 from German automotive firm Continental. The idea is that they can easily deliver any object, ranging from documents, perhaps flowers or even pizzas. If you saw the fifth episode of the fourth season of Black Mirror called Metalhead, you’ll more or less know what this is about, albeit without such fateful results.
But how would it benefit us humans to use robot dogs for home deliveries?
Continental claims that its robot dogs would increase efficiency, safety and availability when delivering homes. The firm’s goal is to create a synergy between the electric and 100% autonomous transport of the future, thus improving the efficiency of traffic in chaotic and congested cities, and of course improving delivery services.
This is why, in the future, when implementing these types of solutions, such as the ROBOT DOGSWith robotic dogs, a definitive solution for urban mobility could be found, as deliveries could be made 24 hours a day, even when many people are at work or engaged in other daily activities.
Its operation is simple or at least they make it look that way: an autonomous car would bring the dogs to their nearby delivery points, there they would search for their final destination, not with the sniffing characteristic of normal dogs, but with a GPS. Once located, they will run to the place indicated for the delivery of no more than one and a half kilometers.
Ralph Lauxmann, the company’s Chief Systems and Technology Officer, commented on its operation in a statement:
“Both are electrified, both are autonomous and, in principle, both can be based on the same scalable portfolio. These synergies create exciting potential for holistic delivery concepts using similar solutions for different platforms. Beyond this technology base, it is reasonable to expect a whole value chain to develop in this area.”
For their part, companies such as Amazon could find in Continental’s proposal with its robot dogs, an ally to improve their home delivery services.
Robot dogs will be seen in the future, but in the distant future.
This novel technology will probably not become operational in the near future. Well, we have yet to find out if we are at least willing to share the streets with these home delivery robot dogs. We do not yet know if the world is ready for that future dominated by Artificial Intelligence and strange robots, nor do we even know if what the company that created the prototype dreams of will specifically help in what they propose. If this works, perhaps, in the future it could revolutionize the home delivery and urban mobility industry.
Companies such as Boston Dynamics, have made great strides in four-legged robots that can successfully complete tasks such as climbing steep hills or mapping complex environments.
