A friendly, autonomous robot that delivers your food

Meet the friendly robot that could deliver your next burrito. Ali Kashani introduces us to Postmates' autonomous delivery robot and explains how it could help reduce carbon emissions and free up valuable real estate in cities everywhere. Learn more about how it was specially designed to navigate complex social interactions on busy sidewalks to bring you your food (and more) with joy.

Food delivery.

It's the thing that saves
millennials from starvation.

By my calculations,

Americans order over 20 million
restaurant deliveries

every single day.

Over half of these deliveries
are actually within walking distance.

But nine out of 10 are delivered in cars.

So basically,

we are moving a two-pound burrito

in a two-ton car

20 million times a day.

The energy to bring you that burrito

is actually bringing you
a two-ton metal cage

with heated seats.

Let's be honest.

We are addicted to our cars.

Did you know that in America,

for every car,
there are four parking spots?

In some downtowns,

over half of the real estate is for cars.

We have designed our cities
around our cars,

because we drive
whether we're going two miles

or 200 miles.

Solo, or with our whole family.

We get into the same SUV
to go buy coffee or a coffee table.

If we could free up
some of these streets and parking lots,

we could build more housing,

more social spaces, more parks.

But to do that,

first, we need to rethink
how we are using cars today.

In the city of the future,

if you want to go five blocks,
you summon a bike or a scooter.

If you're in a rush,
a passenger drone would pick you up.

And if you need food,
no need to have someone drive over --

the food will make its way to you.

Let's go back to those 20 million a day
restaurant deliveries.

If we could get
these deliveries off the road,

we could reduce the need

for as many as one and a half
million cars just in the US.

That's twice the size of San Francisco.

Now, think of the impact this could have
on cities like Delhi,

or my birth city of Tehran,

where car pollution is killing
thousands of people every year.

So how do we get some
of these deliveries off the road?

Well, that's the question

that my team and I have been obsessed with
over the last three years.

And the solution is
actually one of the building blocks

of the city of the future.

We've been creating
small, self-driving robots

that navigate quiet alleys and sidewalks

on a walking pace

and have a secured cargo
to deliver you food and supplies.

Now, before I tell you
more about the robots,

let's do a quick thought experiment.

In your mind, picture a city
with thousands of robots.

Is it this one?

This Hollywood dystopia
is what a lot of people expect.

But our job is to create a friendly future
that's designed for people.

So instead of making aliens,

we set out to create robots
that are familiar.

Robots that would belong
in our communities.

But we also wanted a little surprise.

Something unexpectedly delightful.

Think about it.

You're walking down the street,

and you see your very first robot.

That's the moment
when you're going to decide

if this is a future you love or fear.

And with a lot of people
having these dystopian ideas,

we need to open their minds.

We want to surprise and delight them,

so that we can win them over
on first impression.

This is what we came up with.

It's familiar, but it's also surprising.

It's just a shopping cart,

but it also looks like
we crossbred WALL-E with Minions.

If you live in San Francisco
or Los Angeles,

chances are one of these
has already delivered your food.

As soon as we put robots
out on the street,

we learned some
really interesting problems.

Like, how should robots cross the road?

Or how should robots interact with people
with visual or mobility impairments?

We quickly realized
that we need to teach our robots

how to communicate with people.

People on the sidewalk
come from every walk of life,

so we needed to create a new language,

kind of a universal language

so people and robots
can understand each other

right off the bat.

Because no one is going
to be reading user manuals.

We started with eyes,
because eyes are universal.

They can show where the robot is going

or if it's confused.

Plus, eyes make robots more human.

We also used sounds.

For example, we created this running sound

with frequent gaps

so that people with visual impairments
could locate their robots

using the Doppler effect.

But it turned out these were not enough.

At intersections,

cars would cut in front of our robots.

Drivers were getting confused sometimes,

because robots would take too long
before they started crossing.

Even ordinary pedestrians
were getting confused.

Sometimes, they couldn't figure out
on which side to pass the robots,

because robots make a lot
of small adjustments to their direction

as they move.

This actually sparked a new idea.

What if we used movement
to create a universal language?

Like, at intersections,

robots would gently move forward
before they start crossing,

to signal to drivers that it's their turn.

If they see someone in a wheelchair,

they yield by pointing themselves
away from the sidewalk,

to signal that they're not going to move.

Some of you may remember this.

In 2015, Canadian researchers
sent a robot hitchhiking across the US.

It didn't get very far.

It turns out that robots
can also use some social skills.

Like, if they're being tampered with,

Carnegie Mellon researchers have shown
that small toy robots should play dead,

because people feel bad
when they think they broke it.

But delivery robots aren't toys,

they're not small,
they are out there in public.

We found that with delivery robots,

to get people to stop tampering,

robots need to show awareness.

It's kind of the opposite of playing dead.

In this case,

robots need to acknowledge the situation

to get people to step away.

Also, a word of advice.

If you are a robot and you see small kids,

run towards the closest adult.

It turns out that some kids
just love harassing robots.

So besides dystopia,

Hollywood also promised us
some really cool robots

that would run our errands
or keep us company.

So far, we've really focused
on food delivery,

but in the future,

these robots can do more.

Like, they could gather excess food
and bring it to shelters every night.

Because in America,
we waste 30 percent of our food,

while 10 percent of our people
experience food insecurity.

These robots could be
part of the solution.

Or when we have hundreds of robots
running around cities,

we could have robots carry
emergency medications at all times,

just in case someone nearby
has an allergic reaction

or an asthma attack.

These robots could be on-site
within a minute or two,

faster than anyone else.

And during pandemics,

robots can be a key part
of our infrastructure.

They can ensure

that we can provide our communities
with the essential needs

even during emergencies.

Let me leave you with one last thought.

Today, objects can't get from A to B
without human help,

because our three-dimensional world
is quite complex.

But new sensors and AI can change that.

In a way, technology is like a baby

that has just learned to recognize objects
and understand words,

and maybe even hold a basic conversation,

but it hasn't learned to walk yet.

Now, we are teaching technology

how to navigate
the three-dimensional world

without our help.

We are entering this new era

where insentient objects
are going to get up and move freely.

And when they do,

we've got to make sure
they don't look like aliens.

My vision for the future
is that when things come to life,

they do so with joy.

You know, less like
the movie "Terminator"

and more like "Toy Story."

Thank you.