A Robot Powered by AI aims to Reduce Delivery Costs for Online Stores

 Vayu Robotics' delivery robot uses powerful passive sensors and a transformer-based mobility foundation to avoid the need for LiDAR and deliver up to 100 pounds at speeds below 20 mph autonomously.

Credits: Firecell

A San Francisco Bay Area startup believes it has the answer to the high cost of online orders after announcing its low-cost on-road delivery robot on Tuesday. Vayu Robotics' four-wheel robot uses a transformer-based mobility foundation model with a powerful passive sensor rather than the expensive LiDAR technology typically utilized by on-road driverless vehicles. Utilizing laser light to measure distances and produce high-resolution images of objects and environments, LiDAR is a technology for remote sensing. 

It can accurately map and analyze targets in three dimensions thanks to its ability to detect reflected signals and emit laser pulses. Anand Gopalan, CEO and co-founder of Vayu, stated, "People use LiDAR because traditional cameras have known failure modes in low light, harsh weather, and so on." He told the E-Commerce Times, "But with LiDAR, you always have the trade-off between making something that is high-performance but very difficult to manufacture and expensive to make or low-performance LiDAR that is very easy to manufacture." He stated, "The cost goes up by $10,000 to $15,000 when you put LiDAR on a robot." "That is prohibitively expensive for delivery-related applications."

• In a statement, Vayu said that traditional mobile robots use software modules and expensive LiDAR sensors that are designed to perform a single task at a time. This results in expensive hardware and fragile software that can't handle new situations. A powerful passive sensor and Vayu's foundation model, the machine learning technology at the heart of generative AI, eliminate the need for LiDAR. Consequently, Vayu's delivery robot operates independently and does not pre-map the roads it plans to drive on. 

• It is able to move inside stores, across city streets, and unload packages on driveways or porches while carrying up to 100 pounds and traveling at speeds under 20 miles per hour. The business claims that its delivery robots are already being used in real-world settings. 

• It also stated that it had recently entered into a significant commercial agreement to deploy 2,500 robots for ultra-fast goods delivery with a large e-commerce player that it did not identify by name. Similar commercial customers were also in the works.