The food delivery service Skip is now using a small fleet of cooler-sized, orange robots to make deliveries, as part of a three-month pilot project in Markham.
The four robots have locked, insulated compartments that can hold up to 50 kilogram, with cameras inside that can detect a spill.
On the Skip app, customers within a two-kilometre radius in downtown Markham can choose to have a robot make their delivery. The customer inputs their order number, the box opens, they take their food, and the robot wheels away.
Skip, the app formerly branded as Skip the Dishes, is the latest North American delivery service to try out robots on sidewalks as a way of making shorter runs in congested urban centres quicker and more efficient than cars or bike couriers.
“Driving 20 minutes in downtown Toronto or downtown Markham, you know, that maybe means 10 feet, 50 feet,” Paul Sudarsan, Skip’s VP of retail and new verticals, said in an interview on Wednesday.
But the technology has been controversial, especially in Toronto.
In 2021, a similar robot delivery project by Tiny Mile fizzled, after the city banned robots, or “automated micro-utility devices,” on sidewalks and bike lanes over fears that they’d become a hazard to pedestrians with vision loss or mobility issues.
The Skip test run is using human “robot guides” who follow closely behind, keeping tabs on how the robots interact with the people they encounter on the sidewalk.
A human pilot is also on hand, at an undisclosed overseas facility, to take remote control of the robot when they encounter an obstacle.
“They yield to pedestrians. They yield to wheelchairs. They yield to to strollers,” Sudarsan said.
Asked whether the robots could potentially replace human couriers, he said they’re only meant to compliment Skip’s other delivery methods.
“Couriers will always be integral to our business,” he said.
Skip’s robot operations are run by Real Life Robotics, a firm based out of a startup incubator at the University of Waterloo.
The company operates Skip’s robot mission control out of a third-floor office in downtown Markham. Each night, after the robots end their shift at 9 p.m., a staff member comes down to meet them.
The robots enter “follow me” mode and line up behind the human, like ducklings behind their mother, and together they walk into the lobby, up the elevator and into mission control for recharging and sterilization.
On Tuesday, Real Life Robotics CEO Cameron Waite wanted to demonstrate how the whole thing worked. He opened the Skip app on his phone and ordered two croissants from a bakery across the street. Within a few minutes, on a large screen at the centre of the mission control room, Robot 4F140, who goes by Maple when interacting with the public, was assigned the order.
At its home base, parked in a courtyard outside a bubble tea cafe, Robot 4F140 turned on and started rolling toward the bakery about a block away.
“Now we’re driving,” Waite said, watching a map on the screen as a little green icon representing 4F140 started moving.
Waite started moving around to different windows in mission control, trying to spot 4F140 and its guide on the street below.
“It’ll come out,” Waite said. “He might take a left.”
The robot crosses the street, which at this point in the trial is being done with assistance from a human pilot overseas (the company wouldn’t say where the pilots are located.) But the robots have sensors to detect when a light turns green and it’s safe to cross.
“This is very, very real. It’s very capable,” Waite said, watching as the robot parked outside the bakery and waited for its guide to go in and collect the croissants. “Now it’s more about commercializing these operations. The technology itself is mature. It’s been tested. It’s been vetted.”
Like other robots used for commercial deliveries, the orange Skip robots have human features.
A digital screen on the front makes it look like they have eyes, which is meant to make locals accept the robots as a “member of the community,” said Sharif Virani, head of growth at Real Life Robotics.
If the machines are seen to have human qualities, they’re less likely to be vandalized or stolen, he said. E-scooters, on the other hand, don’t have human features and frequently have people “throwing them around.”
“They didn’t see it as part of the community,” Virani said.
A few minutes later, Robot 4F140 arrived outside the office tower. Virani and Waite went down to meet it.
They scanned the QR code on the robot, and a form popped up on the phone so they could type in the order number. After that, the lid opened and Virani took the croissants.
As the robot headed back to its home base, at about five km/h, it came up to an older man and slowly swerved around him. The man smiled.
“That’s what happens when you have that face,” Virani said, watching the robot and the man. “If you didn’t have a face there, there’s nothing to smile at.”
But shortly after the robot returned to its spot in courtyard, a middle-aged couple had a different reaction. “We are too old to accept that,” said the woman.
“This robot’s on the street?” her husband asked, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”
