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bloomberg.com

Ford’s Way to Finish Driverless

Deliveries: Package-Carrying Robots
By Keith Naughton
6-8 minutes

A promotional photo of the Digit delivery robot from Ford.

Photographer: Ford Motor Co.

Photographer: Ford Motor Co.

It’s a headless robot in a driverless car.

Ford is working on a way to resolve what self-driving researchers

refer to as “the last 50-foot problem.” If an autonomous delivery
vehicle arrives at your house, without any humans aboard, who’s
going to carry the package, grocery bags or piping-hot pizza to your
doorstep? A robot, of course, could be up to the task—with
no tipping necessary.

In Ford’s case, the solution is Digit, an android with two stork-like

legs, arms capable of carrying a 40-pound load and a camera-
encrusted torso topped by a puck-shaped laser-radar sensor. It
could be the headless cousin of a battle droid from the much
maligned Star Wars prequels.

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Source: Ford Motor Co.

The business case for driverless delivery is even more compelling

than robotaxis—and potentially easier to execute. For one thing,
there’s no need to worry about the safety of human passengers.
And the rise of online shopping has turned package delivery into a
huge growth area. Just ask Amazon, which spent $27 billion on
delivery costs last year.

Remove the human driver from the equation, and delivery costs
could plunge by 60 percent or more. The benefits could be in the
billions.

Ford would like to deploy Digit delivery robots as early as 2021,

alongside the planned introduction of its autonomous vehicle
fleets to ferry people and packages around the clock. “We’re going
to have an AV fleet out there, and my goal is to get robots to be
able to be there and ready at the same time,” said Craig Stephens,
director of controls and automation in Ford's research and
advanced engineering.

How real humans will react to this delivery android is a key part of
Ford’s research, which is just getting underway and will include
real-world tests inside Ford factories, and on the sidewalks of
Dearborn, Michigan, and Pittsburgh. “Digit looks actually pretty
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friendly to me,” Stephens said. The “inoffensive” appearance is

“going to be a key thing for people to be able to trust a robot.”

Digit was created by Agility Robotics, a startup with fewer than 30

people based in Albany, Oregon. Chief Technology Office Jonathan
Hurst said he hasn't seen anyone react negatively when meeting
Digit or a forbearer that lacked a torso and was simply a pair of
piston-like legs attached to a motorized midsection. The robots
have been allowed out on the town.

“I have a lot of people ask us, ‘Could this be perceived as

creepy?’” Hurst said. “There is a small subset of people who stay
far back,” he said, “and whip out their smartphone and starting
taking video.”

While the design is likely to evolve, Hurst doesn't see a need to

give Ford’s delivery robot a head. In fact, he wonders if that might
freak people out more. “If it looks very close to an animal or a
human but is not quite there, then immediately people are revolted
by it,” Hurst said. “And we didn't physically need a head up there for
our current perception needs.”

A Fedex delivery robot.

Source: FedEx

Others are tinkering with delivery robots, not all of which are
humanoid. Anybotics and German auto-parts giant Continental
demonstrated a robotic delivery dog concept at the Consumer
Electronics Show this year. Segway has shown a rolling delivery
device that looks like a mobile office copier, and FedEx is testing a
boxy rolling bot that can climb stairs and carry up to 100 pounds.
Starship Robots, which look like squat storm troopers with six

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wheels, are deployed in several cities around the world, according

to the startup based in San Francisco and Estonia. And Postmates,
which is researching autonomous grocery-getting with Ford, has a
cute delivery robot known as Serve with googly eyes like Pixar's
Wall-E, along with four oversize wheels.

Ford is worried that wheeled robot couriers would be blocked by

front-porch steps found outside most homes in America. Digit, by
comparison, can climb steps and raise its arms to catch itself in a
fall. Its tiny feet, soled in corrugated rubber, can traverse concrete,
grass, wood, and gravel.

Ford’s decision to go with two legs, instead of wheels, came with

help from researchers at the University of Michigan. “Our world is
designed for bipedals—us,” Stephens said. “So there's an inherent
attractiveness to a bipedal robot.”

Source: Ford Motor Co.

Another advantage is Digit’s lightweight design. Rather than outfit it

with a full array of sensors and processors, which would push its
bulk past 100 pounds, Digit gets most of its computing power from
Ford’s self-driving vehicle. The same sensors that allow an
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autonomous car to navigate will be used to scan the path to the

door and beam the route to the robot.

Once Digit has left the package on the porch or handed it to the
recipient, it walks back to the delivery van, folds itself into a
compact square, and slides into a drawer that serves as a docking
station. The process looks like something out of a Transformers
movie.

The suburban-porch scenario—“up the garden path to the front

door,” as Stephens puts it—won’t be the only use case. Ford and
Agility plan to test urban scenarios that involve gaining access to
apartment buildings without help of a doorman.

At first, however, there will be a role for human helpers. “We're not
going to be deploying them by the thousands and replacing all
people who do the job right away,” Hurst said.

For Ford, which specializes in commercial vehicles, driverless

delivery has huge potential. The automaker has pegged the
potential value of the market for robot ride-hailing and driverless
delivery at $332 billion. “The business opportunity is large,”
Stephens said. “Robots are going to be necessary.”

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