There was a startup in Berkeley called Kiwibots pretty much did the same thing. The concept seemed promising at first glance, yet I always thought they were too small. I feel like if they made them cooler sized, and had them go on routes like an ice cream truck it would prove to be a better business model than a bunch of tiny robots going to an fro to deliver a bag of chips.

They faked the bots.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fa...

> The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes. Instead, people in Colombia, the home country of Chavez and his two co-founders, plot “waypoints” for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go.

> On the ground in Berkeley, people also do a lot of robot support. Traveling at 1 to 1½ mph, the bots would take too long to chug to local restaurants, so Kiwi workers pick up the food at restaurants and take it via bikes or scooters to meeting spots around campus to insert into an insulated bag in the bots’ storage compartment.

> The average distance a robot covers for a delivery is about 200 meters (656 feet, or one-eighth of a mile) which makes them fall short of a “last-mile” solution.

This isn't real robot automation. It's just trying to shove the human worker out of sight, down the end of the road.

Kiwibot isn't exactly that. Their vehicles are basically modified Traxxas RC cars and their "autonomy" is offshoring remote control work to Columbian workers for situation that the robot can't react to. Unlike Mars Rover that are designed to handle very rough and unexpected terrain, those Traxxas RC probably do not have that stability over obstacles that a mars rover have.

Yes but these rovers are quite slow.

I guess latency isn’t an issue when you have bandwidth / throughput to make up for it? Not for kebabs though (pleases to see that as one of the trial businesses in MK, hah!)

Overnight silent electric delivery with custom delivery machines has historical precedent of course:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float

For customers, latency matters a lot.

Being able to skip a delivery driver tip is a significant incentive.

would they not be just vandalised?

Depends where; the subscription bicycles have worked in a lot of places; but here (Manchester) a lot ended up in the canal. Probably the same.

Maybe initially. Eventually, no. We don't destroy other people's cars for the most part.

> Maybe initially. Eventually, no. We don't destroy other people's cars for the most part.

I recall as a kid seeing so many more trucks vandalized with graffiti than nowadays.

Part of that is probably racism, etc is going down, it's becoming more normal to be different. Maybe?

Maybe these rovers have cameras that can record the vandals for later identification.

Don't they have camera's?

That's due to the mass and power budgets for a Mars rover though, not some fundamental aspect of rovers.

To add to that, there are electric hobby RC cars for sale with enough power to hit 70mph stock.

I had such a thing once. It was so much fun. A friend of mine had some others. Oh boy - what a past time.

I think it’s silly to scratch build rovers. Something like a motorized Renault Twizy would be a better fit.

Surely it's more silly to drive around an empty 500 kg motorized cage for humans just to deliver <1 kg of food?

Doesn’t that happen already? Sure, there’s a human, but he’s dead weight.

But faster driving and more compatible with roads

It makes a lot of sense in Milton Keynes. Unfortunately that kind of design makes it an incredibly boring place to live, but there are some benefits.