Why no mention of the level 4 autonomous robobuggies from Starship. These buggies have been exponentially ramping up now for over 10 years and they can make various grocery deliveries without human oversight. Autonomous vehicles have arrived and they are navigating our urban landscapes! There have been many millions of uneventful trips to date. What I find surprising is that some sort of an oversized robobuggy has not been brought out that would allow a person to be transported by them. One could imagine for example, that patrons of bars who had too many drinks to drive home could be wheeled about in these buggies. This could already be done quite safely on sidewalks at fairly low speed. for those who have had a few too many speed might not be an overly important feature. Considering how many fatalities are involved with impaired drivers it surprises me that MADD has not been more vocal in advocating for such a solution. So, in a sense there is already widespread autonomous vehicles currently operating on American streets. Importantly these vehicles are helping us to reimagine what transport could be. Instead of thinking in terms of rushing from one place to another, people might embrace more of a slow travel mentality in which instead of steering their vehicles they could do more of what they want to like surf the internet, email, chat with GPT etc.. The end of the commute as we know it?
Interesting, thanks for the update—I thought that company was going nowhere but didn’t have data on it and am pleased to learn it is still alive. According to wikipedia,
In October 2021, Starship said that its autonomous delivery robots had completed 2 million deliveries worldwide, with over 100,000 road crossings daily.[23][24] According to the company, it reached 100,000 deliveries in August 2019 and 500,000 deliveries in June 2020.[25]
By January 2022, Starship’s autonomous delivery robots had made more than 2.5 million autonomous deliveries, and traveled over 3 million miles globally,[1][26] making an average 10,000 deliveries per day.[1]
And then according to this post from April 2023 they were at 4 million deliveries.
So that’s Aug 2019: 100K June 2020: 500K Oct 2021: 2M Jan 2022: 2.5M April 2023: 4M
I think this data is consistent with the “this company is basically a dead end” hypothesis. Seems like they’ve made about as many deliveries in the last 1.5 years as in the 1.5 years before that.
The latest delivery count is 5M. That is a fairly substantial ramp up. It means that the double over the 1.5 years from October 2021 --> April 2023 is being maintained in the 1.5 years from Jan 2022 through July 2023 (admittedly with a considerable amount of overlapping time).
In addition it is quite remarkable as noted above that they have been level 4 autonomous for years now. This is real world data that can help us move towards other level 4 applications. Obviously, when you try and have level 4 cars that move at highway speeds and must interact with humans problems can happen. Yet, when you move it down to sidewalk speeds on often sparsely traveled pavement there is a reduction in potential harm.
I am super-excited about the potential of robobuggies! There are a near endless number of potential applications. The COVID pandemic would have been dramatically different with universal robobuggy technology. Locking down society hard when people had to grocery shop would have stopped the pandemic quickly. As it was shopping was probably one of the most important transmission vectors. With a truly hard lockdown the pandemic would have stopped within 2 weeks.
Of course transport will become much safer and more environmentally friendly with robobuggies and people will be spared the burdens of moving about space. It is interesting to note that many people are stuck in so called food deserts and these robobuggies would allow them to escape such an unhealthy existence. Robobuggy transport would also allow school children to have more educational options as they would then not be stuck into attending the school that was closest to their home.
I see robobuggies as a super positive development. Over the next 10 years with continued exponential growth we could see this at global scale.
Why no mention of the level 4 autonomous robobuggies from Starship. These buggies have been exponentially ramping up now for over 10 years and they can make various grocery deliveries without human oversight. Autonomous vehicles have arrived and they are navigating our urban landscapes! There have been many millions of uneventful trips to date. What I find surprising is that some sort of an oversized robobuggy has not been brought out that would allow a person to be transported by them. One could imagine for example, that patrons of bars who had too many drinks to drive home could be wheeled about in these buggies. This could already be done quite safely on sidewalks at fairly low speed. for those who have had a few too many speed might not be an overly important feature. Considering how many fatalities are involved with impaired drivers it surprises me that MADD has not been more vocal in advocating for such a solution. So, in a sense there is already widespread autonomous vehicles currently operating on American streets. Importantly these vehicles are helping us to reimagine what transport could be. Instead of thinking in terms of rushing from one place to another, people might embrace more of a slow travel mentality in which instead of steering their vehicles they could do more of what they want to like surf the internet, email, chat with GPT etc.. The end of the commute as we know it?
Interesting, thanks for the update—I thought that company was going nowhere but didn’t have data on it and am pleased to learn it is still alive. According to wikipedia,
And then according to this post from April 2023 they were at 4 million deliveries.
So that’s
Aug 2019: 100K
June 2020: 500K
Oct 2021: 2M
Jan 2022: 2.5M
April 2023: 4M
I think this data is consistent with the “this company is basically a dead end” hypothesis. Seems like they’ve made about as many deliveries in the last 1.5 years as in the 1.5 years before that.
However, I want to believe…
Thank you Daniel for your reply.
The latest delivery count is 5M. That is a fairly substantial ramp up. It means that the double over the 1.5 years from October 2021 --> April 2023 is being maintained in the 1.5 years from Jan 2022 through July 2023 (admittedly with a considerable amount of overlapping time).
In addition it is quite remarkable as noted above that they have been level 4 autonomous for years now. This is real world data that can help us move towards other level 4 applications. Obviously, when you try and have level 4 cars that move at highway speeds and must interact with humans problems can happen. Yet, when you move it down to sidewalk speeds on often sparsely traveled pavement there is a reduction in potential harm.
I am super-excited about the potential of robobuggies! There are a near endless number of potential applications. The COVID pandemic would have been dramatically different with universal robobuggy technology. Locking down society hard when people had to grocery shop would have stopped the pandemic quickly. As it was shopping was probably one of the most important transmission vectors. With a truly hard lockdown the pandemic would have stopped within 2 weeks.
Of course transport will become much safer and more environmentally friendly with robobuggies and people will be spared the burdens of moving about space. It is interesting to note that many people are stuck in so called food deserts and these robobuggies would allow them to escape such an unhealthy existence. Robobuggy transport would also allow school children to have more educational options as they would then not be stuck into attending the school that was closest to their home.
I see robobuggies as a super positive development. Over the next 10 years with continued exponential growth we could see this at global scale.