San Francisco gets a taste of robotic food delivery

SAN FRANCISCO: San Francisco start-up Marble on Wednesday began giving its home town a taste of restaurant orders delivered by robot, confident that appetite for such service will grow around the world.

Marble partnered with take-away meal ordering mobile application Yelp Eat24 to put its boxy, wheeled robots to work handling local deliveries for some restaurants in the Mission and Portrero Hill districts of San Francisco.

Marble is starting with a "handful" of robots and keeping it opt-in when it comes to whether machines handle deliveries.



Food orders are locked into robot cargo compartments large enough to hold about four standard shopping bags.

Marble robots, the current generation named "Happy" and numbered, roll along sidewalks and cross streets at walking speeds, relying on lasers, cameras and other sensors to manoeuvre.

Marble also created three-dimensional digital maps of neighbourhoods where robots will be working



Marble robots were designed to get around by themselves, but they will have human escorts during the roll-out. Robots are also wirelessly linked to operators who, from Marble's office, virtually ride along.

When robots arrive with food orders, customers get text messages containing codes to enter on key pads to unlock lids.

Marble robots are built by the startup, which would not disclose how much they cost. A revenue model had yet to be put in place. The delivery service launched Wednesday was described as a step on the path to perfecting the robots.