Starship is lauded as one of these 'Estonian success stories', but to me (as a half Estonian / half Australian with I would hope to think a somewhat balanced perspective) it seems like one of these 'solutions looking for a problem' startups. When we have food delivered in Tallinn it's often by an older person who is obviously making some extra cash to help ends meet; I feel better about my 5EUR or whatever going to them than to some startup. The "person in a car" solution, which can do multiple deliveries and also immediately handle at least some product quality issues on the spot, seems like a fairly optimal solution to me. Does the world really need a 10k robot to be delivering a $10 pizza? What happens when there is snow / ice / people messing with it etc etc?

"It looks like they're trying to make enough noise to be acquired by Amazon and exit, rather than actually providing a service that gets used."

I could not agree more.

Nothing much came of it, but there was a Mercedes/Starship concept video.[1] A van carries a number of delivery robots. The van makes a stop, and the robots fan out and deliver to nearby locations. The robots return to the van, and it goes on to the next stop.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0YtPjQ5WCE

Wouldn't it be better to use a cheaper robot and just donate your extra cash to the old people? Is it that you want to compel all other less generous customers to pay for the old people too, and a robot would take away that requirement, which is a kind of tax?

Initially, all the extra money would go to the startup, but with competition, it's the consumers that would save. If it actually works.

There is a drone delivery system that is being developed right now. The plan is to install towers into buildings, where the drones can land and drop off the deliveries. You could potentially do your shopping at work, and then pick up your deliveries at the door once you come home (or have them delivered at your workplace). I'm much more excited for this than the robot.

In many areas, it won't stay at the door intact by the time you get home.

But the roof would probably be fine, which is where the drones would drop the packages. Most package theft from what I can tell happens from strangers, not tenants, and tenants are probably the only people with roof access.

shameless plug for battery swap on uavs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0tCZKAh4H5cUnNtTElaaVJWRDA... minutes 1:05 onwards.

and this is from tesla: https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event But seems like Tesla discontinued battery swapping in favor of superchargers.