Clanker alert! Meet Dot: DoorDash’s new autonomous food delivery robot [Video]

Delivery service DoorDash has unveiled a new autonomous delivery robot called Dot, which was developed entirely in-house and is currently rolling out early access testing in one state. This bug-like “clanker” may be cute, but it also appears quite well designed for commercial operations and safe, timely food and grocery deliveries. Check out Dot in action in the video below.

In its twelve years of existence, DoorDash has become a household name in food delivery services and currently operates the largest platform with the most significant US market share in its segment. In a world of fiber internet, same-day order deliveries, and next-generation computers in our pockets, the “want it now” mentality has become increasingly common. Services like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash continue to invest in, develop, and utilize technology to deliver to customers what they want faster.

We’ve seen autonomous robotaxi networks partner with food delivery services, but what has emerged as an even more viable option is the deployment of autonomous delivery robots. These tiny electric vessels do not require a human driver. Better yet, they can navigate sidewalks and bike lanes – again getting college students or remote workers their coffee, lunch, or groceries even faster.

Today’s robot news from DoorDash is by no means novel, as the delivery service is a bit late to the party. Over the past two years, we’ve covered the rollout of similar autonomous vessels from a slew of competitors, including Starship Technologies, Vayu, and Serve Robotics, as well as drone deliveries with Wing and Uber Eats deliveries in bespoke vehicles developed by Nuro.

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While DoorDash is not the first to deploy delivery robots, it has unveiled an impressive new clanker it calls “Dot,” designed entirely in-house by DoorDash Labs. Check it out.

DoorDash unveiled its new Dot robot design this morning, hailing it as the first commercial autonomous bot designed to traverse bike lanes, roads, sidewalks, and driveways. Again, most of the robots mentioned above have been doing this for years. Well, DoorDash’s Dot has digital eyeballs that move though (So does Serve Robotics’, sorry).

All jokes aside, Dot does look like a viable delivery robot from what we’ve seen in videos also posted by DoorDash today (one of which we’ve embedded below). According to DoorDash, Dot is one-tenth the size of a car and can travel at speeds of up to 20 mph.

It was designed to specifically support local businesses by offering nearby customers a quicker and more seamless delivery solution for food services, and a natural next step in the commercial goods delivery industry. Per DoorDash cofounder and head of DoorDash Labs, Stanley Tang:

You don’t always need a full-sized car to deliver a tube of toothpaste or pack of diapers. That’s the insight behind Dot. The breakthrough wasn’t just making it autonomous, but in making it reliable and efficient to serve the needs of local businesses and consumers. Dot is purpose-built for the millions of deliveries we facilitate every day. It is small enough to navigate doorways and driveways, fast enough to maintain food quality, and smart enough to optimize the best routes for delivery. Every design decision, from its compact size to its speed to the sensor suite, came from analyzing billions of deliveries on our global platform and understanding what actually moves the needle for merchants and consumers.

Dot is merely one piece of DoorDash’s new Autonomous Delivery Platform – a developed system designed to help coordinate and monitor various delivery methods at scale. DoorDash described the approach as a multi-modal delivery system that will consist of human “Dashers”, robots, and even drones. Per the release:

The Autonomous Delivery Platform serves as an AI dispatcher, matching each order with the optimal delivery method based on factors like speed, cost, location, and experience. Whether that’s a Dasher, a Dot on the road, a drone in the air, or a sidewalk robot, the platform orchestrates these decisions in real-time to optimize across our entire global network

To begin, DoorDash has deployed its Dot delivery robots in Mesa and Tempe, Arizona, as part of an early access program. There is no word yet on where the robots might be expanded to next, but if you live in Arizona, keep an eye out for red robotic bugs donning a DoorDash logo. As promised, you can see more of the DoorDash Dot in the video below: